2 dead and multiple people injured — including police officers — in mass shooting at downtown Minneapolis apartment building

Two Killed, Multiple Wounded in Apartment Building Shooting That Left Officers Fighting Through Smoke

Healfromzero.com – A gunman opened fire inside a high-rise apartment complex in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon, killing two people and wounding several others before being shot dead by responding officers. The attack, which unfolded over roughly the span of a single afternoon shift, sent residents scrambling through corridors and into locked units while dozens of uniformed personnel flooded the building with long guns drawn and stretchers staged at the entrance.

The first 911 call came in at approximately 4:36 p.m. local time, carrying the initial report of a single person shot. Within minutes, additional calls poured in describing sustained gunfire, and Minneapolis Police Sgt. Garrett Parten later described how officers arrived to find wounded occupants already lying in the lobby. They tracked the sound of shots upward through the structure and reached an upper floor where, in Peterson’s words, they encountered “a haze that significantly limited their visibility.”

Officers Wounded in Close-Range Exchange

Three police officers were injured during the confrontation. One sustained a gunshot wound to the leg, described as non-life-threatening. A second officer required surgical intervention. A third was being evaluated for what officials characterized as a non-life-threatening injury. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz confirmed Wednesday evening that all three were expected to make a full recovery.

Four additional officers experienced what city officials termed “adverse effects” after exposure to the unidentified substance filling the upper-level hallway. Peterson acknowledged uncertainty about its origin: “We don’t know whether it was smoke or if there was some other event that caused that haze in the in the upper level floor.”

“As officers quickly moved from unit to unit to want to assist anyone who needed help, I can’t emphasize enough how dangerous this situation was and how heroic our officers were in response,” Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters Wednesday night.

Frey added that without the rapid intervention of responding units, the death toll would have been considerably higher. The scene outside the building was ringed by patrol cruisers, armored vehicles, and multiple ambulances as wounded occupants were carried out on stretchers under the watch of armed officers positioned at the perimeter.

The Shooter: Known to Police, Killed on the Ninth Floor

The gunman was identified Thursday as Carlton Neal Johnson II, age 35. Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans stated that Johnson was fatally shot by responding officers in the ninth-floor hallway. A separate law-enforcement source had earlier suggested the wound may have been self-inflicted, though Peterson characterized the death as resulting from the exchange of gunfire with officers.

Peterson noted that police “were familiar with who this individual was.” Earlier that same day, officers had been dispatched to the identical complex to mediate a dispute believed to involve a resident undergoing eviction proceedings. Authorities were working to confirm whether that individual was Johnson himself.

A Resident’s Minutes in the Elevator

Umecua Agnew, 48, was riding the building’s elevator when the first shots rang out from the lobby below. Beside her stood a small girl who had just begun to step toward the open doors. Agnew grabbed the child’s back, slammed the up button, and pressed every floor key she could reach to force the doors shut.

“I just kept praying to the Lord, saying, ‘let me make it to my apartment and don’t get shot,'” Agnew recalled.

Other women in the car screamed as the reality of the situation registered. The elevator carried them past the third floor, where it briefly stopped to drop off the girl and her mother, then continued to the fifth floor. Gunfire echoed through the shaft the entire ride.

A Community Still Reeling from a Nearby Tragedy

The apartment complex sits roughly five miles from Annunciation Catholic Church, where a shooter killed two children and wounded 27 others exactly one year before this Wednesday’s attack. That earlier massacre had shaken the neighborhood’s sense of safety and prompted sustained public debate over gun violence in Minneapolis. The proximity of the two events, separated by only a year and a short drive, underscored how quickly the city’s residents had been asked to grieve again.

City officials confirmed one victim died at the scene and a second succumbed at a hospital. Three additional civilians were shot and transported for treatment. No further fatalities were reported as of Thursday’s briefing.

The incident joins a widening pattern of mass shootings in ordinary American settings — apartment buildings, places of worship, workplaces — that has intensified public pressure on local and state leaders to account for how such events recur in communities that believed they had moved past them. For Minneapolis, the question now is whether the response that saved lives Wednesday will translate into prevention before the next call comes in.