What we know about the mass shooting near Loring Park

Louis Krauss and Victor Stefanescu, Star Tribune on Sep 2, 2026

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A gunman shot two Minneapolis police officers, killed two people and injured three others in an upper floor of an apartment building near Loring Park on Wednesday evening. Another officer was also injured.

The suspected gunman was identified as Carlton Neal Johnson II, 35, of Minneapolis, according to people with knowledge of the investigation. He died died from unknown causes during the incident, police confirmed later.

Here’s what we know so far about the shooting:

What happened? A 911 call came in at 4:36 p.m. that one person had been shot at an apartment building. Officers entered the Shoreline Plaza apartment building, formerly known as Loring Towers, where they found several victims and heard additional gunfire.

Three officers were injured, two of them by gunfire. Two of the officers sustained non-life threatening injuries and a third was in surgery, police said. Police said one victim was dead at the scene and the second died at the hospital. The gunman was also dead at the scene.

Who was the suspected gunman? Johnson, the suspected shooter, was fighting eviction from the apartment complex, according to court records. Attorneys for Shoreline Plaza served him with an eviction notice on June 16, claiming Johnson breached his lease on six occasions between Jan. 16 and June 13.

The notice said Johnson assaulted another resident in March, and walked around the complex with a firearm in June while making “multiple statements to other residents” that he would kill someone. Two days later, the letter said, he flashed his gun again.

In a response to the eviction notice, Johnson and his attorney claimed he was issued a license to carry a handgun before he ever displayed a weapon to anyone at the property. He also denied assaulting and threatening to kill residents with the handgun. The court proceedings were still pending at the time of the shooting.

Shoreline Plaza resident Chris Miller told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he knew the suspected shooter and alleges that he told Miller on Sunday or Monday night that he was going to shoot his ex-girlfriend and two of the building’s property managers.

What did witnesses see? Anthony Strong said he was smoking behind the building when the shots went off. “It was pop-pop-pop-pop and it was a bunch more after that, and then I went upstairs,” Strong said, adding he saw a property manager on the ground, as well as a maintenance worker in the bathroom.

What do we know about the apartment building? There have been several violent recent incidents in the Shoreline Plaza and the surrounding neighborhood. Last September, there was a double homicide in the building. Police also reportedly suspected foul play when they found a person dead in the building in 2020.

The low-income apartment complex was purchased for $30 million in 2021 by a real estate partnership controlled by Related Companies of New York, according to Hennepin County property records. A spokeswoman for Related Companies said they were aware of the incident and “our utmost concern is for the safety of our residents, colleagues and the public.”

How was the neighborhood impacted? Wednesday’s incident snarled traffic in downtown Minneapolis during the evening rush hour. Adding to the traffic issues: an MPD squad car was in a crash near the downtown Target several blocks from the scene of the shooting.

Restaurants, a tattoo shop and several other businesses in the blocks surrounding the scene remained open in the aftermath. Josky Yebo saw “a wave of cop cars” and helicopters circling on his commute home from work. Then, after he walked into his apartment near Loring Park, he said he heard “a bunch of gunshots” around 4:30 p.m.

One woman walked by the crowd with a suitcase and said she just got to town from San Francisco, and arrived “to a mass shooting.”

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(Paul Walsh, Jessie Van Berkel, Jeff Meitrodt, Jeff Day, Liz Sawyer, Brooks Johnson, Jeff Hargarten, Sarah Ritter and Sarah Nelson of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)

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