9-Year-Old Boy Killed in Random Minn. Shootings

A 9-year-old Minnesota boy was killed during a series of apparently random shootings last night. An assailant terrorized a residential area for about 30 minutes, walking down the middle of the street shooting at passing cars, the Pioneer Press reports. Nhan Lap Tran, 34, was arrested in the shootings, which took place in an area around his parents' home, where neighbors say he either lives or visits often. At least four cars were shot in a radius of several blocks; the dead boy's mother and another motorist were also injured.

"He was just walking diagonally down the middle of the street. Then he turned toward me and just started firing," says one witness. "He was just walking, not even running. It was crazy." The boy's mother pulled her minivan, with the back window and both rear tires shot out, into a nearby grocery store parking lot for help; her son had been shot in the head and died later at a hospital. She was shot in the arm. A third victim, a 68-year-old woman, was hit in the finger and leg and had to have her finger amputated. Her vehicle was hit by six rounds. "My three sisters were in the car; they just yelled, 'Go!'" says the woman's granddaughter. The victim pulled into a nearby parking lot and a man who stopped to help also saw his tires shot out. (More shooting stories.)