Minneapolis, MN — The Minnesota Jays youth foot ball team is currently looking for a new practice field after a horrific practice Monday night. 42 boys and their coaches were practicing at Jordan Park in Minneapolis.
They were in the middle of drills when gunfire rang out. Coach Marvin Thomspon said, “There was like 15-17 shots then a pause and then restarted again.”
Coach David Trueblood said, “I was thinking maybe it was firecrackers, but right after I heard whistling and pings bouncing off light poles, Marvin and I looked at each other and the next thing you know we are running and pushing each other and pushing kids to the ground.”
Eleven-year-old Justin Stewart was practicing on the field when the shooting started: “We were all around each other making sure nobody got hit from bullets.”
Justin’s Mom, Cassandra Cadotte said it was awful. “I was yelling at the boys lay down, everybody get down, it was horrible.”
The Jays Youth Football Team
The two coaches, Thompson and Trueblood said that their first goal was to get the boys out of there.
They rushed everybody to a spot behind a brick wall for cover. “We ushered them over there to that corner [of a school building], being that it was concrete,” Trueblood said. “We know if they’re shooting from this way, at least we got concrete to protect them.”
The coaches got all the boys into three team vans and an SUV and drove away from the park as fast as they could.
Coach Thompson said, “It was crazy I never experienced anything like that before with that many kids out here and being helpless my son and my nephew were out here, I had 50 sons out here.”
Coach Trueblood said no one was hurt yet, “It’s unfortunate. I stayed in the community for 30 years, I played football in the same park as a kid and this is something we wanted to give back to the community, we were trying to teach kids the right thing, we understand what is going on around us. We actually need police because it’s going to be chaotic this summer.”
Cassandra Cadotte had a message for the thugs who shot up the neighborhood: “They want to put other people’s lives in danger they have no remorse, they don’t care, they should do something that helps the community not hurts the community, we’re already hurting.”
Police have not arrested anybody for the shooting. The Minnesota Jays are having a team-building barbecue tonight –not at Jordan Park — while they look for a new spot to practice in the future.
Neighborhood Already On Edge
Meanwhile, this location is only two blocks away from where the body of a seventeen-year-old boy was discovered over the weekend.
Police reported that the young man had been shot while driving around in a car with several friends. His friends had pulled over and dropped him off on the sidewalk, where he later died.
There’s no word yet on if the two drive-by shootings are connected.
Minneapolis Is Becoming A War Zone
Just a month since the death of George Floyd and already the city council has voted to majorly defund the Minneapolis police department.
And since that time, violence and chaos has ruled the streets of Minneapolis. We reported yesterday how more than 90 people have been shot in Minneapolis since May 26th — the day after Floyd’s death.
These GANGS and THUGS were in the middle of a rolling gun battle when they decided to drive by a park and shoot at each other.
These weren’t lawful gun owners. They weren’t peaceful Americans. They were violent thugs and criminals who are taking full advantage of the fact that the cops aren’t coming.
This is what you get when you dismantle police and when you pass gun control.