Bemidji Police Give More Details on Shooting That Hospitalized 3 People

Lakeland News has an update regarding the shooting that took place in Bemidji on Thursday that sent multiple people to the hospital, including more information on the relationship between the suspect and victims.

The Bemidji Police Department received a 911 call at around 4:40 Thursday afternoon, where gunshots were reported in the area of 2500 Itasca Loop NW.

”Initially, [the reports were] just shots fired, multiple individuals were hit,” said Dan Seaberg, a detective sergeant with the Bemidji Police Department. “They were outside, residents just outside the parking lot. Three individuals [were found], all adults with gunshot wounds.”

The officers then rendered first aid to the victims, who were taken to Sanford Bemidji Medical Center shortly after for critical injuries.

The suspect, a 16-year-old-male, initially fled on foot from the scene with a handgun. Two hours after the initial report, at around 6:40 pm, the shooter surrendered himself at the Law Enforcement Center without incident.

“The actual suspect was wearing pretty much all white,” Seaberg said. “He had a white shirt and light-colored pants on when he left the scene. He was wearing something different when he turned himself in. He had put on a sweatshirt and had changed his pants. So once he turned himself in, we sat down and took a statement from him. He was cooperative; he provided a statement of the incident and what had occurred, and he was then ultimately arrested for the assaults of the three victims.”

The Bemidji Police Department wants to wait to release a motive behind the shooting until they can talk to the victims again, when they are not going through a medical crisis. Detective Seaberg did confirm, however, that the victims and the shooter are related.

“I’m not going to go into details on what those relationships are just due to the nature of the investigation right now,” added Seaberg. “But there is a relationship between the two [parties], between the suspect and the three victims. This wasn’t a random act; there was an ongoing issue that was happening that led to the shooting.”

The shooter did not have the handgun on his person when he turned himself in but was cooperative with authorities and later helped officers find the weapon.

“People don’t need to be concerned that there’s a weapon out there,” Seaberg asserted. “We did recover the weapon that was utilized. He ran on foot and disposed of it, and then we were able to recover it in a wooded area just south of 15th Street there, south of Conifer.”

The Bemidji Police Department’s K-9 was the one who found the handgun in the forest off of 15th Street.

We will provide more details on the victims’ conditions and the timeline of events that led to the shooting once they become available.