30 people arrested in chaos on July 4 in Minneapolis

More than two dozen teenagers and young adults were arrested late Thursday and early Friday after allegedly shooting fireworks at vehicles and people in Minneapolis.

Police arrested 30 people and questioned five others during a night of chaos that centered primarily around the Dinkytown neighborhood. The suspects range in age from 15 to 23; the majority are adults.

Unlike the brawls on July 4 last year and in 2022, Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters at a news conference Friday that there were no reports of injuries from fireworks or gun violence.

“That’s the good news,” O’Hara said. “The bad news is that once again there were groups of teenagers and young adults attacking police officers and other individuals and their property by throwing fireworks at them.”

As in years past, O’Hara said, the groups organized on social media. He attributed park police Chief Jason Ohotto’s decision to close the parkways to car traffic to keeping large groups of youth away from the Chain of Lakes – one of the main problems of the past year.

O’Hara said he was on patrol with a group of police officers in Dinkytown when someone shot at them with a grenade.

“It was literally louder than a shotgun going off right next to you,” O’Hara said. “That’s the power of these things. If that thing had entered a car, if it had gotten too close to any of the pedestrians out there, it could have ripped off a limb or even killed a person.”

A spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office told MPR News in an email Friday that prosecutors are reviewing cases against 17 adults and two juveniles for possible charges and are awaiting information from police on another adult and three other people.

The number of arrests this year is almost double the number in 2023, when about 16 people, mostly teenagers, were arrested in connection with the July 4 chaos.

According to court records, one of the adults arrested last year, 21-year-old Iyub Qays Ali, was convicted in March of fleeing from police in a car. A jury acquitted Ali of assault and riot charges.

In May, Judge Marta Chou sentenced Ali to 10 days of community service and three years of supervised probation. If he successfully completes his probation, Ali’s conviction will be added to his record as a misdemeanor.

A second defendant in 2023, 19-year-old Zamir Abdulkadir Yassin, pleaded guilty to riot charges in March and was sentenced to 30 days of house arrest with electronic monitoring and two years of supervised probation.

Neither Ali nor Yassin were among those booked into the Hennepin County Jail on Thursday and Friday.