Police found a man fatally shot after they responded to numerous 911 calls about gunshots in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff area on Tuesday night.
Terry Edwards’ homicide was the seventh of the month in St. Paul and the 21st of the year. Preliminary information didn’t link his killing to other homicides, but investigators will be seeing if there are any connections, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman.
Edwards, 36, of St. Paul, “wasn’t a bad person,” his sister, Sari Edwards, said at the scene Tuesday night. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”
Officers responded to the area of Mendota Street and Fremont Avenue about 7:30 p.m and found a man with an apparent gunshot wound to the chest, Ernster said. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
No one was arrested Tuesday.
Police were looking for witnesses or surveillance cameras to “shed light on who is responsible,” Ernster said. The shooting did not appear random, police said.
Investigators are asking anyone with information to call the homicide unit at 651-266-5650.
HE LOOKED AFTER HIS NIECES, NEPHEWS
Edwards was “always looking after his nieces and nephews,” and had many people who loved him, Sari Edwards said.
He moved to St. Paul from Chicago.
“People come here for a better life,” his sister said. “He was living a better life. He could have just taken his chances in Chicago, though.”
There have been 119 people wounded or killed in shootings in St. Paul this year; the number stood at 112 this time last year, according to the police department.
In the preceding 20 years, St. Paul has seen an average of about 16 homicides a year, according to FBI data. During that period, the most was 24 homicides in 2005 and the least was eight in 2011.
INCREASED FOCUS ON GUN VIOLENCE
Edwards’ death comes as the police department has beefed up patrols in response to the recent shootings.
“As a community we’re working to address the root causes of gun violence,” Ernster said Tuesday. “As a police department, we’re still out there being proactive to and responding to the day-to-day activity.”
For example, in a recent 24-hour period, officers revived a man who had been shot and had stopped breathing Saturday night on Hazel Street between East Seventh Street and Stillwater Avenue, and found two people with handguns on Sunday, Ernster said.
In one of the cases, an officer assigned to the department’s gun violence initiative stopped a driver for a traffic offense. Police found a handgun and a felony amount of drugs in the vehicle, and arrested a man, Ernster said.
On Sunday night, multiple people approached officers in the area of Grotto Street and Thomas Avenue and reported there was a male with a gun. A man ran from officers and, when police took him into custody, they found a gun nearby, Ernster said.
“These incidents highlight the efforts of our officers who are being proactive in addressing gun violence and identifying people carrying guns illegally,” Ernster said.
