DULUTH – A 17-year-old boy has been charged with fatally shooting a 24-year-old man in the head while opening fire toward a crowd in downtown Duluth.
Patrick W. Battees Jr., of Proctor, who turns 18 in about three weeks, was charged by juvenile petition in St. Louis County District Court with intentional second-degree murder in connection with the shooting of Juamada K. Anderson, 22, of Duluth, early Saturday evening in the 100 block of E. 3rd Street.
Prosecutors have filed with the court to have the case tried in adult court. Battees remains in custody ahead of a hearing on June 3. Court records do not yet list an attorney for him.
This was Duluth's first homicide of the year.
"This young man with his entire life in front of him was gunned down in the streets of Duluth," said Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "That shocks all of our consciences when we see people die violently in our street, and it's something that certainly concerns us."
According to the charging document and a police report filed in court:
Officers responding to the shooting around 7 p.m. found Anderson on the ground, shot in the head. Two females held T-shirts to his head, while one female held one of his hands and a male held the other.
The officers located Battees minutes later in a nearby alley and a .45-caliber handgun tucked in an old couch in a different alley close by.
Battees declined to be questioned by police but did ask whether his sister had been hit by gunfire.
While being booked, officers took from him more than $1,200 in cash and a small amount of marijuana.
Video surveillance of the encounter showed a fight and then Battees pulling a gun from his waistband and shooting into a crowd of people.
Anderson "appears to be in the sight line of [Battees]," the charge reads. The police report added that Anderson was "turning to run away before being shot by Battees." He fired one more shot before fleeing.
Battees' father told a county corrections official that his son is on medications for schizophrenia and has not been taking them consistently. Missing his medication can make his behavior very erratic, the father added.
Shell casings from .45-caliber and 9-millimeter firearms were found near the scene. Witnesses reported hearing anywhere from 10 to 20 gunshots from multiple sources.
The cause of the shooting remains unclear.
Tusken said Tuesday that there are one or two other suspects who may have fired at Battees as he was fleeing, and they are being sought.
"We always pursue gun crimes in earnest," he said. There were 41 shots-fired or shooting incidents last year in Duluth, Tusken added, "the most that I had seen in my career" spanning nearly three decades in the city.
"We need to engage our community to the greatest extent we can, so we have a community that isn't going to resort to gun violence to solve problems," he said.
The investigation is ongoing, and those with any information are asked to call 218-730-5050.
Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482
Brooks Johnson • 218-491-6496
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