13 shot dead in north Mpls.; 12-year-old best friend wounded

BOY 13, shot dead in north Mpls.; 12-year-old best friend wounded

• Article by: PAUL WALSH and MATT MCKINNEY , Star Tribune Staff Writers
• Updated: August 25, 2011 - 1:45 PM

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Kevin Funchie, the father of 13-year-old murder victim Rayjon Gomez, spoke to the media outside the family's northside residence Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011. A night earlier Gomez and a 12 year-old boy were gunned down while riding on a bike together near the 1600 block of Russell Ave. in Minneapolis, MN. Standing next to Funchie are family members Katherine Funchie, middle, an aunt, and Gwen Funchie, the boy's grandmother.

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Boyhood friends ages 13 and 12 riding their bikes were shot Wednesday night, the older one fatally, and police are investigating whether this violence is connected to other recent bloodshed involving young people in the city.
About 9 p.m., police found one of the boys in the street near 16th and Upton Avenues N., Sgt. Stephen McCarty said Thursday morning.
Before the victim was taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale with non-life threatening injuries, he told police there might be another victim nearby, McCarty said.
After a comprehensive search, which included a police canine unit and a State Patrol helicopter, a second boy was found in the 1600 block of Russell Avenue. This victim, in a yard next to a house, was dead at the scene, McCarty said.
No arrests have been made, and authorities have yet to release the boys' identities, ages and hometowns.
McCarty said the boy who survived is "stable. I think he's going to be OK."
"You've got to wonder" whether the shooting of the boys is related to other gunfire that has targeted juveniles of late, McCarty said. "You've got to look at the possibility, and we are looking into it."
Police Chief Timothy Dolan has scheduled a City Hall news conference for Thursday afternoon in the wake of the shootings. On Saturday, Quantell Braxton, 14, was shot to death on the North Side.
Neighborhood activists are organizing a vigil at 6 p.m. Thursday at Lyndale Avenue and West Broadway in an effort to stem the violence.
Ron Edwards, a North Side activist and a former member of the Police Community Relations Council, said Thursday that the boy who died was 13-year-old Ray'Jon Gomez of Minneapolis.
The boy was "shot in the side and bled to death" after running and trying to hide from the shooter, according to Edwards, who said he spoke afterward with the victim's family and members of law enforcement.
Edwards, who said he has known the dead boy's family for many years, said "no one has a clue" about what led to the boys being shot. He said the shots came from adults in a vehicle.
A cousin of Gomez said the boy and two of his friends were riding their bikes near 17th and Russell Avenues North, when words were exchanged with someone and shots were fired.
The relative added that Gomez rode away, then jumped off his bike and ran down an alley, before starting to retrace his path and collapsing face-down between two homes in the 1600 block of Russell.
Lisa Church, of Minneapolis, at North Memorial with her wounded son, 12-year-old Deondre Timberlake, said Deondre and Ray'Jon were best friends who spent every day together.
Church said Deondre's blood pressure shot up when she broke the news to her son that Ray'Jon was dead.
"He's not taking this good at all," Church said of her son. "He's just been having nightmares. He just keeps calling for the boys."
Church said Deondre was shot in the back, and doctors have decided not to remove the bullet because it's so near his spine.
Edwards said the neighbors who milled about afterward Wednesday night were "angry and frustrated" by the mounting violence.
"The emotion is strong and very sweeping ... when you see children gunned down, happening here, and you don't have any suspects, that's really not healthy. Then people lose confidence that anyone really cares."
Two members of the City Council's committee dealing with public safety said police have yet to brief them on the shootings.
"I'm stunned, and I haven't gotten an update yet," vice chairman Cam Gordon said. "It looks like we're making progress, and then we have serious incidents that mean this is a problem we've got to keep watching."
Council President Barbara Johnson said the tight cluster of recent shootings suggests a connection. "There's ongoing rivalries and gang activities that police monitor, and it heats up all the time.  I wouldn't be surprised to see if that's behind it," she said.
Last year, the city tried unsuccessfully to get federal money to pay former gang members and others to act as street peacemakers -- trying to deter likely perpetrators and cool emotions when there's a threat of retaliatory violence.
Johnson said she's worried that underlying social factors are contributing to the crime.
"As I get older, I am increasingly more discouraged about the future for many of our young people," she said. "Too many are unparented, too many are parents themselves.  It's too many going down that road."
Police say that anyone with information about Wednesday's case should call them at 612-692-TIPS (8477).
During a neighborhood prayer vigil Tuesday night in a Walgreens parking lot in north Minneapolis, bullets hit a 19-year-old woman standing nearby and grazed the face of a man among those praying for peace, said police and witnesses. The woman was critically hurt but expected to survive, McCarty said.
The vigil came just a few days after Braxton was found shot in the street several blocks away.
There have been no arrests in either instance on the North Side.