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New details emerge about the victims of mass shooting at Minneapolis apartment tower

Paul Walsh and Victor Stefanescu, Star Tribune on

Published in News & Features

The seven people wounded by gunfire in Wednesday’s mass shooting at the Shoreline Plaza apartment building in downtown Minneapolis ranged from residents to building staff to police officers who rushed to the scene. Two who lived there were killed by gunman and fellow resident Carlton Johnson II before he was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police on the building’s ninth floor.

Here is what we have learned so far about each of Johnson’s victims:

Dale Henry Spry, 63, was one of two people fatally shot on the apartment building’s ninth floor, where Johnson also lived.

Spry’s daughter, 39-year-old Sarah Parsons, said she and her father had fallen out of touch since she was in elementary school. Even so, she said she was grateful that “he put me on this earth. ... I’m still trying to process (his death).”

She said her father served in the military, experienced PTSD because of his time in uniform and struggled with alcohol.

Spry’s Facebook biography said he “went straight into the Army after graduating from (Minneapolis) North High School.”

Vicki Parsons said she and Spry lived in Brooklyn Center when they were raising Sarah and her brother, Craig, but the couple parted ways roughly 35 years ago.

“It’s shocking” to hear of his death, said Vicki Parsons, who shares a home in Onamia, Minn., with Sarah. “Nobody deserves to die like that.”

Nephew Kendall Coleman has started an online fundraising campaign on behalf of the family. He wrote that Spry “was a big part of the Native American community and the North Side Minneapolis community. He was someone people knew, cared about, and respected.”

The fundraiser said he graduated from North Community High School and served in the United States Army in 1990, “and those parts of his life reflect the deep roots and service that shaped who he was.”

Muse Abdi Afrah, 61, was the other resident who was fatally shot. Public records offer little insight into Afrah, other than he lived in Tennessee for a number of years.

In May 2025, he was carrying a driver’s license with a Nashville address during contact with police in Minneapolis’ Loring Park for a minor offense.

Afrah’s burial was scheduled for Saturday at Garden of Eden Cemetery, commonly known as the Burnsville Cemetery.

The officers wounded by gunfire were identified as Joseph Michnowski, a five-year veteran of the force, and Yayhe Ahmed, a 2024 lateral transfer who previously served with the Richfield and Metro Transit police departments.

Investigators are working to determine whether Michnowski fired his weapon. Ahmed fired his weapon, as did officer Liban Ibrahim, but he was not injured.

Interim Minneapolis Police Chief Bill Peterson said another officer who was injured, Ernest Boateng, was cut by glass. He was treated and released, as was Ahmed.

“The level of heroism that took place (Wednesday) is practically unrivaled,” Mayor Jacob Frey said. “The heroic nature that our cops exhibited deserves not just our greatest thanks but also the understanding that these are the kinds of dangers they face day in and day out.”

Jan Elaine Peterson, 56, was identified by family as the Shoreline Plaza building manager who was shot and wounded.

Peterson, of Blaine, “was shot multiple times and is in critical condition but stable,” niece Richelle Bronson wrote on a fund-raising page started to help the family with expenses related to Peterson’s hospitalization.

“She has had multiple surgeries,” Bronson disclosed. “Please pray for my brother, their children/grandchildren and our family.”

A second building employee also was shot and wounded, according to the BCA. That person’s identity has yet to be disclosed. Derrick Thompson, a resident who moved out of the building a week before the shooting but has been going back daily for his mail, said he knew him as “Rusty.”

Nyemuoch Gatkuoth Pal , 33, was the first to be shot by Johnson while the two were exchanging custody of their 5-year-old daughter.

 

“My sister ... survived a domestic attack during a child exchange while on her way to work,” said Teathloach Pal in an online fund-raising campaign she started on behalf of Nyemuoch Pal. “She was shot in front of her daughter, and our family is now trying to help her through the painful and difficult recovery ahead.

“She is three years sober, graduated, got her own apartment and has been working full time. She has fought hard to rebuild her life and create stability for herself and her girls.”

Court records show that Nyemuoch Pal and Johnson are the biological parents of a girl who turned 5 years old last month. Pal also has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

Tasha McCoy said she and Pal “grew up together. I knew her since middle school (in Fridley).”

McCoy, who lives in the Houston area, added that Nyemuoch Pal “was there when I was homeless. She was always one of my closest friends. No matter how far, she was always in my life. I just hope she gets through it.”

As for Nyemuoch Pal’s relationship with Johnson, McCoy said, “She kept that real quiet. She wanted to keep it away from us.”

While many others in the building were spared being shot, they remain traumatized.

Michael Broadway said he was in the elevator with the shooter he called C.J., who told him to get out.

“I didn’t know what he was going to do,” he said.

The scene in the building was chaotic before authorities said the gunman was dead. Some residents, who said they saw bodies down on Shoreline’s first floor, were kept at bay behind police tape while dozens of officers packed the ramp to the building’s entrance.

“There’s always something happening in this building,” said Broadway, who was locked out of the building for hours.

Broadway showed a reporter footage from a security camera he keeps in his studio apartment. It captured a crowd of officers in tactical gear entering Broadway’s unit, yelling “Police department!” and searching behind furniture with a flashlight.

Anthony Strong said he was taking a smoke outside the back of the building when he heard “pop-pop-pop-pop, and then there was a bunch more after that.”

Strong said he went back inside and saw the property manager on the floor “probably dying” and a maintenance man in a bathroom and wounded.

He said he saw another two people who had been shot. Law enforcement officials then pushed him and others out of the building, saying, “ ‘go, go, go!’ ” he recalled.

“I’m trying to process it now,” Strong said Wednesday about the carnage he witnessed.

Umecua Agnew, another resident, was descending in an elevator to the first floor when the shooting started. “It was terrifying,” she said.

She was in the elevators with a few adults and a child when they reached the ground floor and saw the scene. They quickly pressed a button to close the elevator’s doors and go back up. She said she could still hear the sound of shooting when she reached the eighth floor and ran into her apartment. She hid inside her locked bathroom. The fire alarm went off and a neighbor helped her walk down the stairs.

“I was terrified that I might get caught in this shooting in the hallway so I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “I just thank God for being alive because that could’ve been me,” she said, wiping her tears.

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