A gang-related shooting outside a suburban Minneapolis homecoming football game left two people wounded and thousands fleeing in panic Friday night—and former corporate media figure turned Senate candidate Michele Tafoya is blaming eight years of single-party rule and a "light touch" on crime for the violence now reaching Minnesota's quiet communities.
Two Somali nationals, ages 17 and 18, both known to police, were wounded in the shooting in the parking lot of Eden Prairie High School's Aerie Stadium, according to the Eden Prairie Police Department. Authorities believe the shooting stemmed from a beef between local Somali immigrant gangs, sources told FOX 9. A large fight broke out on the west side of the stadium just before shots were fired. Neither victim was a student at Eden Prairie or Minnetonka high schools.
The 18-year-old was discharged from the hospital Saturday; the 17-year-old remains hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Police say they do not have sufficiently specific suspect information to release. Saturday's homecoming dance was canceled.
"While we believe we would have the planning, resources and support to make tonight's event safe and enjoyable, holding a dance less than 24 hours after a trauma in our community feels out of place," school principal Dr. Jaysen Anderson said in a Facebook post.
Spectators described chaos. "Everybody was just running in one direction," 11-year-old spectator Addison Stetcher told KARE 11. "People were climbing the fences and that kind of scared me." Play-by-play announcer Wally Langfellow, in the press booth for 30-plus years, said he'd never seen anything like it.
Tafoya, who left her national broadcasting career to run for U.S. Senate, told FOX 9 that Minnesota's crime problem stems from leadership that won't enforce the law. "Crime is crime and no matter who commits it, it's gone up over the last eight years," she said. "This kind of crime that disrupts a high school football game, or as we saw several weeks ago at Our Lady of Grace, a Catholic church and school where they had to take the baskets and hoops off the basketball courts so that people wouldn't come play late at night, which also means the kids can't play at recess—why is this happening going unpunished?"
She pointed the finger directly at Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. "This single-party rule that Peggy Flanagan and Tim Walz have overseen for the last eight years has taken us 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction," Tafoya said. "It's brought us an increase in crime. It's brought us declining test scores." She noted Flanagan was part of the defund the police movement, while Tafoya herself has been endorsed by the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association and the Minneapolis Federation of Police.
The New York Post framed the shooting around the Somali gang angle in its headline; FOX 9's interview with Tafoya omitted any mention of the suspects' background, with Tafoya insisting "crime is crime no matter who commits it." The tension is clear: one outlet names the demographic factor; the candidate, speaking to a local audience, declines to—which itself reflects the constraints on public figures that the establishment press enforces.
Tafoya also declared herself a "First Amendment absolutist" on press freedom, saying all news outlets should be allowed to cover the White House. She pledged to represent Minnesota rather than answer to party bosses, lobbyists, or any president.
The open question: when gang violence reaches church basketball courts and high school homecoming games in the suburbs, how long can Minnesota's leadership keep treating it with a light touch?
