Day and night the bullets zip through this predominantly Black neighborhood, hitting cars and homes and people. The scores of victims have included a 7-year-old boy, wounded in a drive-by shooting; a woman who took a bullet that came through her living room wall while she was watching television with her family; and a 17-year-old girl shot in the head and killed.
*
A 72-year-old woman stopped when she heard a teenager yell to her from a distance. Alarmed, she tried to shoo him away, but the teen and a friend rushed toward her, she said, grabbed her purse and beat her to the ground.
The boys fled down the alley, then abruptly turned back to steal her car, too.
The brazen attack on a Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis fit a familiar pattern among a spate of violent carjackings throughout the Twin Cities this year, a troubling surge that law enforcement largely attributes to small groups of marauding teens. In many cases, juveniles use the stolen vehicles to commit other strong-arm robberies.
