Six year old girl shot dead in Minneapolis, city council president urges a focus on ‘police violence’

A six year old girl named Aniya died today after being shot in the head in Minneapolis on Monday evening. WCCO reports:

She was riding in her family’s car as she and her mom drove back from McDonald’s, when bullets started flying outside of their North Minneapolis home. One of those bullets hit Aniya in the head.

Her mother carried her daughter into the trauma center following the shooting. On Tuesday, Aniya was breathing through a ventilator and had signs of brain swelling.

Her mother described her daughter as full of life, adding she liked unicorns and loved to make people smile. The victim’s mother never thought she’d find herself having to deal with this much grief but says she also feared she would, given how many children have been hurt by gun violence in Minneapolis this year.
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Aniya is the third child to be shot in Minneapolis in the last three weeks, and all were shot in the head. Ten-year-old Ladavionne Garrett Jr. was shot in the back seat of his parent’s car on April 30. Nine-year-old Trinity Smith was jumping on a trampoline at a birthday party on Saturday when she was hit by gunfire. Both are at North Memorial, where their beds are side-by-side.

“They were shooting through a group of five kids that was out there, and they hit my baby,” Smith said. “I’ve been here every day. I go up periodically, I pray over her, I talk to her, bring her things, let her know that I’m there.”
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So far this year, at least 185 people have been shot in Minneapolis. That’s up nearly 150% from this time last year. There’s also been a sharp spike in murders – 27 — according to MPD. That’s more than double last year’s count at this time.

The same day Aniya Allen was shot, Lisa Bender, the President of Minneapolis City Council took to Twitter:

Data from Mapping Police Violence shows that, so far in 2021, police in Minnesota have killed seven people. Five of these have been white, one black. Not one person of any race has been killed in the city of Minneapolis.

This is not to dismiss or downplay these incidents, but is this really “what we need to stay focused on” when three black children have been shot in Minneapolis — one fatally — in the last three weeks?

Lisa Bender — and other city council members — are utterly divorced from reality. Where their focus should be on ending the explosion of violence in Minneapolis, they are, instead, engaged in an ideological war on the city’s police. It is the residents of Minneapolis — and disproportionately its black residents — who are paying the price of this war.

A GoFundMe for Aniya’s medical bills and funeral expenses can be found here.

John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment.