A recently evicted tenant opened fire inside a downtown Minneapolis apartment building on Tuesday afternoon, killing two people and wounding several others, including two police officers struck by gunfire, before the suspect himself was killed.

Carlton Neal Johnson II, 35, began shooting inside Loring Towers, a high-rise at 15 E. Grant St., shortly after 4:30 p.m. on September 2, the New York Post reported. Johnson had just been evicted from the building and carried 34 prior criminal cases in the Twin Cities. Days before the attack, he warned a neighbor he intended to shoot specific people.

Two civilians died, one at the scene, one later at Hennepin County Medical Center. Johnson died by suicide. Five others were wounded by gunfire, including two Minneapolis police officers. A sixth officer suffered non-gunshot injuries. All three officers are expected to make a full recovery.

Officers ran toward gunfire and arrived in under two minutes

Police reached the building in less than two minutes after a 911 call came in at approximately 4:30 p.m., Newsmax reported. They entered a dangerous, haze-filled environment and pursued the shooter to an upper floor. Officers armed with long guns kept watch on the eighth floor for an extended period as the SWAT response unfolded.

Two heavily armored SWAT vehicles staged at the intersection near the building. Ambulances lined the area. Several stretchers were brought out of the building, and some of those removed appeared to have leg injuries.

One of the wounded officers was shot in the leg. Another was struck twice in the abdomen and taken into surgery. Hennepin County Medical Center confirmed it received seven patients total from the shooting but did not disclose the conditions of the four non-officer patients.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey praised the officers who entered the building under active fire, as Breitbart reported:

"But for their heroic work, the death toll would have been far higher."

Interim Minneapolis Police Chief Bill Peterson did not hold back about the violence his officers encountered.

"I'm truly sickened by this level of violence."

Johnson had 34 prior criminal cases and had been fighting eviction since June

Johnson's criminal record stretched across the Twin Cities, 34 cases in all. He had been fighting an eviction notice from the building since June 16, and the eviction stemmed from threatening behavior at the complex. The fact that a man with that record and that pattern of threats was still cycling through the system until he picked up a gun is a question Minneapolis officials will have to answer.

A witness inside the lobby of Loring Towers told KARE 11 she heard an argument, then multiple shots, and saw one person struck by gunfire. The University of St. Thomas sent an alert stating a shooter had been located and one person was in custody, though police separately confirmed the suspect was killed, raising questions about whether a second individual was detained.

The pattern is familiar in cities across the country: repeat offenders cycle through a system that fails to hold them until the consequences turn fatal. Johnson's 34 cases did not prevent him from living in the building he terrorized, and his eviction for threats did not come fast enough to stop him from acting on them.

FBI and state officials responded as the city locked down blocks

The City of Minneapolis issued a press release asking residents to avoid the area from 12th Street to Franklin Avenue and from Hennepin to 3rd Avenue South "to allow emergency personnel to safely conduct response operations." The closure covered a wide stretch of downtown.

FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X that the bureau was aware of the shooting and that agents were heading to the scene.

"Our personnel are responding, we will offer any and all resources necessary to assist local authorities."

Gov. Tim Walz issued two separate statements. In the first, he said he was "grateful to law enforcement actively working to ensure the safety of our neighbors in Downtown Minneapolis this afternoon." In the second, he confirmed his public safety team was responding and that state officials were on the ground to support local law enforcement. He later added, as the Washington Examiner reported, that he was "keeping all of the victims in our prayers as more information about this tragic shooting unfolds."

Walz's statements focused on prayer and gratitude. They did not address what allowed a man with 34 criminal cases to remain in a residential building after months of threatening behavior, or what, if anything, the state intends to do about it.

The multi-agency response, local police, SWAT, FBI, ATF, reflected the scale of the crisis. But the crisis itself reflected something deeper: a system that processed Johnson's threats on paper and left his neighbors to absorb the real-world cost.

Minneapolis officers put their lives on the line while the system failed ahead of them

The officers who sprinted into Loring Towers within two minutes of the 911 call did exactly what the public expects of law enforcement. One took a bullet in the leg. Another took two rounds in the abdomen and went straight into surgery. They ran toward the gunfire, and as in other recent incidents involving officers confronting armed suspects, they did so knowing the risk.

Mayor Frey was right that their work likely prevented a higher body count. But heroism at the point of crisis does not excuse the institutional failure that preceded it.

Johnson had been flagged for threatening behavior. He had been served an eviction notice. He had accumulated three dozen criminal cases. None of it stopped him. The eviction process ground forward at its own pace while the people living in that building waited for something to give.

Across the country, communities have watched violent actors face consequences only after the worst has already happened. Minneapolis now joins that list again.

Several critical questions remain unanswered. Authorities have not disclosed what specific crimes filled Johnson's 34 prior cases, or why those cases did not result in restrictions that could have prevented him from carrying out an attack. The identities of the two people he killed have not been released. The nature of the argument the witness heard before the shooting has not been explained.

And the discrepancy between the University of St. Thomas alert, which said one person was "in custody", and the police statement that the suspect was killed has not been resolved. Whether a second individual was involved remains an open question.

In the aftermath of other high-profile shootings that have tested public trust in institutions, the pressure on Minneapolis leaders to account for what went wrong before the first shot was fired will only grow.

Two people are dead because a man with a long record and a documented history of threats was still free to act. The officers who stopped him deserve every word of praise. The system that let it get that far deserves none.