Death toll mounts in spate of Twin Cities shootings

The Hennepin County attorney's office filed murder charges Monday against a 50-year-old man in the death of Jessica St. Marie, whose killing in Minneapolis was one of eight fatal shootings in the Twin Cities in the last week.

Ten people have been killed so far in Minneapolis and St. Paul in October, making this a particularly deadly month.

Police say St. Marie, 28, was shot to death at a bus stop on Lake Street. Elija Larkin, 19, was shot outside a north Minneapolis church and died nearby. Another man was fatally shot Monday afternoon at Lake Street and Pleasant Avenue in Minneapolis.

Tyrone Rice Jr., 16, was struck in the head by a bullet when someone fired shots into a car parked on 27th Avenue North last Thursday afternoon. He died the next day.

Courtney Bell, who taught Rice at North High School, called him "probably one of the sweetest, most respectful ... kindhearted young men that I have had a chance to meet and interact with and teach."

There was a pair of shootings Sunday night, one in Minneapolis and one in St. Paul.

In Minneapolis, a man was found shot to death in an alley on the south side. In St. Paul, police responded to a "shots fired" call near the intersection of Beaumont and Bedford Streets and found a woman lying near the street with a gunshot wound. The woman later died at the hospital.

She was one of three people shot to death in St. Paul in the last week.

Police spokesperson Steve Linders said that city residents as well as police are upset about the recent spate of shootings, and that the department is doing something about it.

"We are taking officers from specialty units and we are putting them in areas where we're seeing increased activity," he said, adding that people would "see an increase in police presence in these areas."

There were 13 homicides in St. Paul last year, a few more than have happened so far in 2015. And in Minneapolis so far this year there have been 40 homicides, already surpassing the 32 killings it tallied in 2014.

Most of the known homicide victims in Minneapolis are black males, ranging in age from 16 to 56. And the majority of all victims were shot to death.

Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau said in a statement last week that the recent killings in the city have a common denominator: the involvement of firearms. While Harteau assured residents that officers are working hard to find the perpetrators, she also said it is virtually impossible to stop people who decide to pick up firearms to settle their disputes.

Correction (Oct. 19, 2015): An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Tyrone Rice Jr.