BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (WCCO) – A 19-year-old Minneapolis man is accused of shooting a girl in the back after an argument with a group of men inside a Brooklyn Park apartment complex last Friday, according to charges filed Wednesday in Hennepin County Court.
Jarvae Josiah Somerville has been charged with two felony counts of second-degree intentional attempted murder in connection with the incident.
According to a criminal complaint, Police were called to the Huntington Apartments in Brooklyn Park on a report of a shooting with at least one person hit. When authorities arrived, they found a female victim lying on the second floor of the apartment building with a bullet wound in her back.
Officers spoke with witnesses at the scene, who said there had been a fist fight between several young men. During the fight, one of the men, later identified as Somerville, pulled out a gun and started firing, the complaint states.
Two people were arguing in the hallway of the apartment complex when four black men approached them. They told the two to “take it outside” and not fight inside the apartment. One of the men told the group that they were “grown as hell, they going to do what they going to do.” The complaint then states that one of the four men, later identified as Somerville, pulled out a gun and pointed it in a man’s face. That ignited a bigger fight as a man jumped on Somerville’s back from behind to try and take the gun away.
Somerville was knocked to the ground and jumped, and he eventually chased after two men and fired at them with his gun, according to the complaint. That’s when the female, an unintended target, was hit.
In an interview with police, Somerville said there was a fight at the apartment complex but that he didn’t have a gun, nor did he shoot anyone. The victim told police she knew Somerville, and that he called her after she was shot. He didn’t admit to her that he was the shooter, but was crying and said how sorry he was, the complaint states.
If convicted on both charges, Somerville faces up to 40 years in prison.
