2024 Burnsville shooting | |
---|---|
Location | Burnsville, Minnesota, U.S. |
Date | February 18, 2024 c. 5:30 a.m. (CST) |
Attack type | Mass shooting, murder-suicide, triple-murder, shootout |
Weapon | Multiple firearms, including two AR-15-style rifles obtained via straw purchase [1] [2] |
Deaths | 4 (including the perpetrator) |
Injured | 2 (1 by gunfire) |
Perpetrators | Shannon Gooden |
Assailants | Shannon Gooden |
Charges | Ashley Anne Dyrdahl:
|
On February 18, 2024, during a police standoff in Burnsville, Minnesota, United States, Shannon Gooden shot and killed police officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge and firefighter-paramedic Adam Finseth. Another police officer was injured by gunfire. After firing at the first responders, Gooden killed himself with a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The officers were responding to a 911 call that reported an alleged sexual assault. [3] [4] Federal authorities alleged that the weapons Gooden used were obtained illegally via straw purchase and filed criminal charges against his girlfriend. [5]
The perpetrator, identified as 38-year-old Shannon Gooden (December 30, 1985 – February 18, 2024), committed suicide after firing more than 100 rounds at the responders. [6] [7] [4] Gooden, who had a violent criminal history dating as early as December 2004, lost his firearm ownership rights following his conviction in an August 2007 felony assault for a fight with family members at the Burnsville Center, but he unsuccessfully attempted to restore his firearm rights in 2020. [8] Gooden had previously been accused of intimate partner violence multiple times in court, and at least three women sought orders of protection from him. One ex-girlfriend said Gooden also got other family members to assault her, and that he had previously fantasized about dying in a shootout with the police, in an attempt to keep her from getting them involved. The woman and Gooden had three children together, who were among the seven children overall present in the house during the shootout. [9]
According to authorities, Gooden fired multiple guns during the incident. [10] One of the firearms, an AR-15, was acquired on January 5, 2024, at a local gun store via a straw purchase by Ashley Anne Dyrdahl. [11]
The first responders killed in the shooting were Burnsville police officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, along with firefighter-paramedic Adam Finseth, 40. In addition, another police officer, Adam Medlicott, 38, was wounded in the shooting and discharged from the hospital the following day. [12] A child who lived at the home was cut by flying glass after Gooden shot through a window. [13]
In Burnsville, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, a woman called 911 at 1:50 a.m. local time on Sunday, February 18, 2024, to report an alleged sexual assault by her husband and to request a police presence at her house. The caller provided her address, but the call cut off shortly after. The 911 dispatcher called back several times in an attempt to gain more information. [14]
Officers from the Burnsville Police Department arrived at the house just before 2:00 a.m. Gooden initially said he was unarmed. Officers entered the home and attempted to negotiate with him for several hours, before Gooden opened fire without warning at 5:26 a.m. A paramedic was subsequently struck by gunfire and killed while attempting to offer aid to the officers. Gooden continued firing from inside the house at police, including shooting through a window, [15] [16] until the standoff ended with him killing himself with a single gunshot to the head. Officers found his body and cleared the house at 10:15 a.m. [15] [16]
The investigation showed that Gooden fired over 100 rifle rounds during the shooting and found several firearms, including one equipped with a binary trigger and a large amount of ammunition at the scene. [15] [16] At some point during the incident Gooden had been shot in the leg. [13] [2]
The shooting was the subject of national media coverage in the United States.
Angie Craig, whose United States House of Representative district includes Burnsville, said, "Today serves as another solemn reminder that those who protect our communities do so at great personal risk. We must do everything in our power to prevent tragedies like these before they happen and hold violent criminals accountable to the fullest extent of the law." [17]
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and United States Senator Amy Klobuchar expressed condolences to the families of the victims. [17] Walz ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-staff. [18]
Violence Free Minnesota, an anti-domestic-violence advocacy group, said it considered the victims of the shooting to be the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th known victims of intimate partner homicide in Minnesota in 2024, and that they represent the way domestic violence "touches and impacts communities and people beyond those just in the relationship". [19]
Following the shooting, members of the Minnesota Legislature discussed implementing stricter gun storage, safety, and reporting requirements, as well as providing additional services for victims of domestic violence. [20] Later, following the indictments against Dyrdahl, they also began to discuss tightening the penalties for making straw gun purchases, as well as banning binary triggers like the ones on the guns used in the shooting. [21]
On February 24, a convoy of several hundred cars, fire engines, tow trucks and semitrucks traveled across Burnsville to commemorate the deceased first responders and to raise donations for their families. The convoy, which was organized primarily via Facebook, began and ended at Burnsville Center, lasting several hours. [22] [23] [24] A memorial processional was also announced for Wednesday, February 28, which resulted in changes to the local bus schedule for that day. [25] Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District also cancelled all classes on the day of the memorial. [26]
Ashley Anne Dyrdahl, a former girlfriend of Gooden, was federally indicted on March 14 for allegedly straw purchasing five firearms on Gooden's behalf, two of which were used during the shooting. According to U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger, "The indictment makes it clear that Dyrdahl and Gooden knew exactly what they were doing…That he could not purchase firearms because he was a convicted felon. So instead, he would pick out specific weapons and she would buy them in violation of federal law — placing powerful weapons in the hands of a violent, convicted felon." Dyrdahl had previously petitioned to have Gooden's gun rights restored, which was denied. If convicted, Dyrdahl faces up to fifteen years in prison. [27]
Dyrdahl was charged with one count of conspiracy, five counts of straw purchasing, and five counts of making false statements during the purchase of a firearm. Among the guns she purchases were two AR-15-style firearms. She pleaded not guilty to the charges at a hearing on March 14, 2024. [5]
A shootout, also called a firefight, gunfight, or gun battle, is an armed confrontation entailing firearms between armed parties using guns, always entailing intense disagreement(s) between the fighting parties. The term can be used to describe any such fight, though it is typically used in a non-military context or to describe combat situations primarily using firearms.
Everytown for Gun Safety is an American non-profit organization which advocates for gun control and against gun violence. Everytown was formed in 2013 due to a merger between Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
Brew City Shooter Supply, previously known as Badger Guns and Badger Outdoors is a gun shop in West Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just outside Milwaukee. The business has been investigated for alleged "straw purchase" sales of firearms and ammunition that brought it attention from the media and the U.S. BATF. In 2015, the firm was ordered to pay nearly $6 million to two police officers for having illegally sold a gun.
In the early morning of December 24, 2012, William Spengler, a 62-year-old man living in West Webster, New York, a suburb of Rochester, deliberately set his home and vehicle on fire. He then perpetrated a mass shooting, firing upon first responders. Spengler killed two firefighters, and injured two more and a police officer, before committing suicide. The badly burnt corpse of his sister was later found in his home.
On November 22, 2014, Tamir E. Rice, a twelve year old African-American boy, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old white patrolman with the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP). Rice was carrying a replica toy gun; Loehmann shot him almost immediately upon arriving on the scene. Loehmann and his partner, 46-year-old Frank Garmback, had been responding to a dispatch call regarding a male who had a gun. A caller reported that a male was pointing "a pistol" at random people at the Cudell Recreation Center, a park in Cleveland's Public Works Department. The caller twice told to the dispatcher that the pistol was "probably fake", and also stated that the male was "probably a juvenile", but the dispatcher did not relay either of these statements to Loehmann and Garmback.
The killing of John Crawford III occurred on August 5, 2014. Crawford was a 22-year-old African-American man shot and killed by a police officer in a Walmart store in Beavercreek, Ohio, near Dayton, while he was holding a BB gun that was for sale in the store. The shooting was captured on surveillance video and led to protests from groups including the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement.
On November 15, 2015, two police officers fatally shot Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old African-American man, in Minneapolis. The two shooters were Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze. They were a part of the Minneapolis Police Department which subsequently placed the men on paid administrative leave. The night after Ringgenberg and Schwarze shot him, Clark died at the Hennepin County Medical Center after being taken off life support. His death resulted from one of the gunshot wounds the shooters inflicted on November 15.
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African American man, was fatally shot during a traffic stop by police officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony police department in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.
On April 3, 2018, at approximately 12:46 p.m. PDT, a shooting occurred at the headquarters of the American video-sharing website YouTube in San Bruno, California. The shooter was identified as 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam, an Iranian-American woman, who entered through an exterior parking garage, approached an outdoor patio, and opened fire with a Smith & Wesson 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. Aghdam wounded three people, one of them critically, before killing herself with her own firearm.
Willie McCoy, also known as Willie Bo, was a 20 year old African-American rapper, killed by six police officers in Vallejo, California, on February 9, 2019. The officers had responded to a 911 call of an unconscious man in a vehicle in a Taco Bell drive through, when they found McCoy, with a .40 caliber handgun with an extended magazine on his lap.
On July 28, 2019, a mass shooting occurred at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. The gunman killed three people and wounded 17 others before killing himself after a shootout with responding police officers.
On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at sixteen locations in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, killing twenty-two people and injuring three others before he was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the community of Enfield. The attacks are the deadliest shooting rampage in Canadian history, exceeding the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, where fourteen women were killed.
A wave of civil unrest in the United States, initially triggered by the murder of George Floyd during his arrest by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020, led to protests and riots against systemic racism in the United States, including police brutality and other forms of violence. Since the initial national wave and peak ended towards the end of 2020, numerous other incidents of police violence have drawn continued attention and lower intensity unrest in various parts of the country.
Dolal Idd was a 23-year-old Somali-American man who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with Minneapolis police officers at approximately 6:15 p.m. CST on December 30, 2020, after he shot at them from inside the car he was driving. The fatal encounter happened in the U.S. state of Minnesota during a police sting operation.
On March 22, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Ten people were killed, including a local on-duty police officer. The shooter, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, was arrested after being shot in the right leg. He was temporarily hospitalized before being moved to the county jail. After undergoing mental evaluations during the legal proceedings, Al-Issa was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in December 2021 and in April 2022. On August 23, 2023, prosecutors announced that Al-Issa was mentally competent to stand trial; a judge ruled as such on October 6 of that same year. On September 23, 2024, Al-Issa was found guilty in the shooting and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Uvalde school shooting was a mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others.
On May 15, 2023, a mass shooting occurred in Farmington, New Mexico, United States. Three people were killed, and six others were wounded, before the shooter, 18-year-old Beau Wilson, was killed by police.
A binary trigger is a type of device that allows a semi-automatic firearm to fire at an increased rate. A binary trigger works by firing one shot upon pulling the trigger and then firing a subsequent shot upon release of the trigger.
The following is a list of events of the year 2024 in Minnesota.