Minnesota Crime: 3 arrested, 15 shot, 1 killed in wild St. Paul bar fight

 

Fifteen people are shot - with a woman in her 20s killed - after multiple gunmen open fire at a bar in St. Paul, Minnesota with police chief branding the crime scene 'hellish'

• It happened shortly after midnight Sunday at the Seventh Street Truck Park bar
• Three men - ages 29, 32, and 33 -  were arrested in connection with the shooting 
• A woman in her 20s was pronounced dead at the scene, police say
• Fourteen others were rushed to local hospitals and are expected to survive
• This is the 32nd homicide in St. Paul this year, on track to break last year's record 

By ADAM MANNO FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 11:59 EDT, 10 October 2021 | UPDATED: 14:04 EDT, 10 October 2021

 
 
 
 
 
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Three men have been arrested in connection with a shooting that killed a young woman and inured 14 others at a crowded bar in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota early Sunday morning.

Police found a 'chaotic scene' after responding to the Seventh Street Truck Park bar at 12.15am.

A woman in her 20s was pronounced dead and 14 others were rushed to local hospitals with gunshot wounds, though the 14 are all expected to survive, according to the Saint Paul Police Department. 

'There were gunshot wound victims lying in the street outside the bar, there were gunshot wound victims lying in the sidewalk outside the bar and there were gunshot wound victims lying on the floor inside the bar,' police spokesman Steve Linders told Minnesota News Now reporters at the scene.

Police announced that three men were arrested in connection with the shooting Sunday afternoon, after confirming that there were 'several shooters.' They have yet to identify the woman who was killed. 

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Police in St. Paul, Minnesota are investigating a shooting that left one dead at downtown bar

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The incident took place Sunday shortly after midnight at a packed bar on West Seventh Street

Police arrested Terry Lorenzo Brown, Jr., 33; Devondre Trevon Phillips, 29; and Jeffrey Orlando Hoffman, 32.

All three men appear to have extensive rap sheets in Saint Paul, according to court records.

Brown's previous charges date back to 2006 and include aggravated robbery, drug possession, domestic assault and violating a no contact order.

Phillips previous charges include driving with a suspended license, use of a fictitious name and date of birth, third degree DUI and fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle. 

Hoffman's charges include second degree burglary, misdemeanor domestic assault, domestic abuse and violation of a protection order. 

The three men are being treated for injuries at a local hospital and will be booked into jail once they're discharged, police say. 

Some of Sunday's victims were hit in the ankles and arms, Linders said, while others were more seriously injured. 

The Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office will conduct an autopsy on the deceased woman to confirm her identity and cause of death. 

Five investigators with the police department's homicide unit are looking into the incident with patrol officers, the forensics services unit and the video management unit, police said in a statement posted Sunday at 7.44am.

An Instagram video posted by user Boima under the handle @bfree2laugh shows people screaming and wailing as officers respond to the scene.  

'We were just up in here. As soon as I walked in to go to my homeboy, I heard the shots fire. I guarantee you it was probably like 10 shots or so,' he recounts behind the camera.

'My instincts just got down on the ground and basically ducked down as slowly as possible, and then started to hit up my friends to see if they were good, and thank God, they're good.'

Fifteen people are shot, one woman killed in St. Paul shooting

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News outlets have identified the bar as the Seventh Street Truck Park, which hosts multiple food trucks in an indoor space

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Police believe that multiple shooters are responsible, but there have been no arrests

Police said they worked with 'Good Samaritans' to render aid and make sure it was safe for fire medics to enter the area.

'My heart breaks for the woman who was killed, her loved ones and everyone else who was in that bar this morning,' said police chief Todd Axtell. 

'In an instant, they found themselves caught in a hellish situation. I want them to know that we have the best investigators in the country, and we won't stop until we find the people responsible for this madness. We will do our part to hold them accountable.' 

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The incident took place at the 200 block of West Seventh Street, according to officers. 

Multiple local news outlets, including KSTP and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press named the location as Seventh Street Truck Park, an indoor bar lined with various 'food trucks' serving different types of cuisine.

Four of the injured were taken to Regions Hospital, three to United Hospital and seven to Hennepin County Medical Center, police spokesman Linders said. Some rode by ambulance and others in private cars.

The homicide was the 32nd of the year in the city, according to police, meaning the city is likely on track to break last year's record.

One person killed and fifteen injured at St. Paul, MN bar shooting

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Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter responded in a statement hours after the shooting

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'Our community is devastated by the shocking scenes from last night,' the mayor tweeted

There were 34 homicides in Saint Paul in 2020, matching the 1992 record, according to the Pioneer Press.

'Our community is devastated by the shocking scenes from last night,' Mayor Melvin Carter of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party said in a statement posted to Twitter hours after the incident.

'As our St. Paul officers work to bring those responsible for these senseless acts into custody, our work to build more proactive and comprehensive public safety strategies is more urgent than ever. We will never accept violence in our community.'

The incident comes as the troubled city combats rising crime rates, with police reporting a 15 percent increase in crime from 2019 to 2020, according to yearly statistics released in January.

Homicides rose by 13.3 percent to 34 in 2020, and aggravated assault jumped by 32.1 percent from 946 in 2019 to 1,246 in 2020.

Burglaries also saw a spike of about 11.8 percent, from 2,038 in 2019 to 2,279 in 2020.

Overall, violent crimes in St. Paul increased by 25 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Rape is the only crime to see a decrease, falling from 236 in 2019 to 196 in 2020. 

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Overall crime in Saint Paul rose 15 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to yearly statistics

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The number of murders in Minnesota increased an alarming 58 percent last year

The entire state of Minnesota saw murders jump up by 58 per cent last year to 185, an all time record. 

Downtown Saint Paul, where Sunday's incident took place, saw its lowest crime rate in five years over the months of June, July and August.

'We were 23 percent below last year's crime rates and we're 10 percent below the five-year average,' Joe Spencer, the president of the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance, told WCCO last month.

US Rep. Betty McCollum called the shooting 'a horror' in a series of tweets Sunday morning.

'The epidemic of gun violence plaguing the Twin Cities has hit us in St. Paul with a mass shooting event that can only be described as a horror,' she said.

'I know our St. Paul community will come together to support the victims and their families during this time of pain and grief.

'I'm committed to keeping St. Paul safe and that means working with all community leaders to get guns off our streets and out of the hands of criminals. We must never allow this kind of criminal act to happen again.'

 

Rewilding: conservationists want to let elephants loose in Europe – here’s what could happen

Harry Wells is a research ecologist at the University of Leeds. Nora Ward is a lecturer in philosophy at the National University of Ireland Galway. Ramiro D. Crego is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Imagine driving through a lush, green landscape in France or Germany and spotting a herd of elephants roaming freely. As absurd as that might seem, it was only 10,000 years ago that creatures the size of elephants populated continents like Europe. That’s a blip in evolutionary terms.

In the last 10,000 to 60,000 years, humans have almost single-handedly eliminated around 80% of the world’s herbivore species that weigh over a tonne – known as “megaherbivores”. The last living mammoth, for instance, was wandering around Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia as recently as 3,700 years ago.

This massive loss of megaherbivores in such a relatively short period has had effects on vegetation that we can still see today, like promoting different types and sizes of plants. By eating trees, shrubs, grasses and herbs – like elephants and giraffes in Africa – these giants play a crucial role in maintaining a diverse and healthy landscape, with a balance between woodlands and grasslands.

For instance, elephants knock over trees, giving more space for grasses to grow and helping savannah ecosystems to flourish. They are also critical for dispersing seeds across landscapes and helping to recycle nutrients in the soil.

Elephants could help rebalance ecosystems in Europe

To restore balance to ecosystems damaged by factors including the loss of larger creatures, some have proposed bringing back lost species – which could include megaherbivores. This is already being promoted in Africa by organisations such as Space for Giants and African Parks. The problem is that we know very little about how reintroducing these giants could affect smaller species, some of which are facing extinction themselves.

In a study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, we shed light on the consequences of reintroducing such species into ecosystems that have lost them, by looking at how they affect life in a Kenyan savannah.

Our study

By excluding elephants and giraffes from an area in the savannah using electric fences, we studied how other animals in the area would respond to their absence. Our methods were simple, but smelly: over 12 years, we counted the dung piles of 12 species of smaller herbivores such as impalas, zebras, gazelles and buffaloes. This enabled us to assess whether these animals preferred to hang out in areas with or without elephants and giraffes.

Elephants’ grazing habits can drastically change landscapes. Taki Wells

We found that most animals, particularly the smallest ones, preferred the elephant and giraffe-free zones. In fact, zebras were the only animals that preferred the areas with these megaherbivores, perhaps due to zebras’ preference for wide open spaces with fewer trees and more grass (neither elephants nor giraffes eat much grass).

Our findings suggest that restoring megaherbivore populations will reduce habitats that smaller herbivores prefer. This is particularly important to consider in areas where smaller species are already endangered. But this doesn’t mean we should discount the value of reintroducing megaherbivores altogether.

Next steps

In Denmark, researchers have proposed introducing Asian elephants to a site near Copenhagen. They are the closest living relatives of mammoths, which we’ve not yet been able to resurrect. Similarly, there are already over 100 captive Asian elephants in the United States, which could be allowed to roam freely in larger enclosures.

Plans like these would increase the habitat and population of larger endangered species. They would also provide valuable opportunities to observe megaherbivores’ impacts on native plants and animals before larger-scale releases are considered, while improving the welfare of captive elephants.

Mammoths used to populate wide swathes of Europe. Quinet/Flickr

Another example can be found in Australia, where researchers have suggested that introducing wild elephants and rhinos could help to control wildfires. By eating lots of plants that, when dry, fuel more frequent and hotter fires, the large animals could mimic the ecological role of species like the now-extinct 1.5 tonne wombat.

However, until such experiments actually take place in Europe, North America or Australia, we must rely on what is known about similar species in other ecosystems to have an idea of what to expect.

It’s important to point out that, just as elephants and giraffes reduce tree densities that have increased in their absence, their effects on other herbivores are likely a sign of the ecosystem and food supply returning to their more natural, healthiest states. This shouldn’t be an issue as long as we ensure, through careful planning and monitoring, that other plant and animal species aren’t being threatened with extinction due to rewilding interventions.

Whether we introduce ecological replacements for extinct giants or return existing megaherbivores to their former stomping grounds, the potential ecological impacts of reintroducing such large creatures on native plants and animals should not be overlooked as we ramp up rewilding efforts globally.

https://theconversation.com/rewilding-conservationists-want-to-let-elephants-loose-in-europe-heres-what-could-happen-168212