4 children found shot in stolen car in Minneapolis

Four children, ages 11 to 14, driving around Minneapolis in a stolen car were shot and wounded, one critically, when an assailant chasing them unleashed a barrage of gunfire on the vehicle, police said.

The shooting unfolded around 1 a.m. Sunday in northwest Minneapolis, setting off ShotSpotter gunfire detection activations and prompting multiple 911 calls, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara.

Two boys and two girls were shot in the incidents, and an 11-year-old boy driving the stolen car was taken into custody, O'Hara said. One of the wounded girls was shot in the head and was in critical but stable condition at Hennepin Medical Center, O'Hara said. The other three juveniles were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, O'Hara said.

The names of those injured were not released.

"Four kids shot between [the ages] 11 and 14 is outrageous and everyone should be up in arms over it. The police are doing everything that we can in response to this, but we can't keep responding after the fact," O'Hara said Sunday.

The assailant who opened fire on the stolen white Kia has not been caught or identified and a motive for the shooting remains under investigation.

"The preliminary investigation indicates that five minors were inside of a stolen Kia driving in this area when a dark-colored sedan began following them and firing at them with fully automatic gunfire," O'Hara said at a news conference Sunday near the crime scene.

At least 30 shell casings were collected at the scene, O'Hara said.

"We believe even more rounds were fired because some of those casings may have been inside the suspect vehicle," O'Hara said.

The chief said the driver of the stolen car, an 11-year-old boy who was not injured in the shooting, was detained at the scene but was later released to his parents.

O'Hara said two of the juveniles in the stolen car were arrested less than two weeks ago for being in a stolen vehicle.

"We are failing to deter this behavior and, with that being said, we are failing these kids as well," O'Hara said.

O'Hara said the shooting came during an uptick that Minneapolis police noticed this month in the theft of Kias and Hyundais after the number of those types of stolen vehicles had gone down in the past year.

"What's most notable over the course of the year is that while there's fewer of these cars being stolen, the activity that these juveniles are involved with has become more and more brazen," O'Hara said. "There have been more aggravated assaults, more robberies, more hit and runs, more serious crimes more frequently committed by those individuals who were involved in the theft of these cars. So it's very, very concerning."

He said Sunday's shooting is an example of the escalating boldness of the perpetrators.

"It just shows really brazen, callous behavior," O'Hara said. "They don't care about their own lives let alone the lives of other people."