MINNEAPOLIS Minnesota : Man killed hours after vigil
The latest in an alarming spate of killings in Minneapolis, Minnesota Phillips neighborhood happened just hours after people held a peace vigil nearby.

A man was shot and killed early Sunday across from Peavey Park, at Franklin and Park avenues, about 12 blocks from East Phillips Park, where about two dozen people held a vigil Saturday evening. It's the fourth killing in the neighborhood in 10 days.

Minnesota police haven't identified the latest victim or a suspect. After responding to a "shots fired" call at 4:15 a.m. Sunday, Minnesota police found the body of an adult man lying in the street on Park Avenue. The man was shot while in his car, witnesses told Minnesota police, then staggered out of his car and slumped into the street.

The three previous slayings occurred in a cluster on the eastern fringes of the neighborhood, which lies between Interstate 94 and Lake Street and between Interstate 35W and Minnesota 55 (Hiawatha Avenue).

On Aug. 8, taxi driver Mohamed Ahmed Saleh was shot in the head and crashed his cab into a basketball court in East Phillips Park. Last Monday, 34-year-old Willie Wise was shot dead on the 2900 block of 17th Avenue South. A day later, 49-year-old Terrance "Eric" Stonechild was beaten to death near the intersection of East 25th Street and 18th Avenue South. An Oklahoma man and a New Brighton teen have been charged in connection with Stonechild's death.

Sunday's killing marked the 33rd homicide in Minneapolis, Minnesota this year. The city had recorded 25 by mid-August a year ago.

Minneapolis, Minnesota city council member Dean Zimmerman, whose ward includes the Phillips neighborhood, says the blame for what is happening in Phillips goes beyond this latest perpetrator.

He cites the loss of more than 100 Minnesota police officers stemming from cuts to the city budget, spurred by funding cuts from the state. Zimmerman also draws links to rising joblessness and homelessness.

"We've got desperate people, and desperate people do desperate things," he said by phone Sunday afternoon, after spending much of the day watering and planting trees in East Phillips Park. "Couple that with our absurd drug laws, where every person with a joint is a criminal, and that drives people to commit other crimes."

A woman who lives in an apartment near East Phillips Park said Sunday she worries about her 82-year-old mother, who lives just down the hall from her. After recent gunshots outside her window, the elderly woman crawled out of her apartment in a fit of terror, said her daughter, who wouldn't give her name.

"It's terrible," she said. "We really don't know what to do about it."

While the Phillips neighborhood is "a little scarier late at night now than it used to be," Zimmerman says residents don't deserve much of the stigma associated with the violence.

Many victims and people behind the crimes there, including those responsible for the beating death, don't live in the neighborhood, Zimmerman says. He also cited a recent neighborhood drug bust that resulted in the arrest of nine people — none of whom live in Phillips.

"I don't know why (it happens), other than maybe word gets out this is a place to buy drugs, and the people buying are coming in from Wayzata and Maple Grove," Zimmerman says. "These are parasites on the neighborhood. They sure wouldn't be allowed to do this in Linden Hills."

Healing the community goes beyond corking the recent string of violence, says Gordon Thayer, director of the American Indian Community Development Corp., which works to improve the lives of the neighborhood's homeless and alcoholics.

Thayer says economic development and community activism have cut violent crime in the neighborhood over the past five years, but he says businesses need to reinvest in the people living there.

"You can't build a community with just bricks and mortar," he says. "You have to change lives. And the whole community has to be engaged in making a safer community."