A St. Louis Park man faces felony charges after allegedly firing a gun outside an apartment complex in the middle of the night earlier this month, according to a criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County.
Terrance Lorenzo Johnson, 34, is charged with felon in possession of a firearm and reckless discharge of a firearm within a municipality. He was arrested April 23, posted $100,000 bail and was released three days later.
Around 2:40 a.m. on Sunday, April 5, multiple callers reported hearing gunshots outside an apartment complex on the 6000 block of West 37th Street in St. Louis Park. One witness told officers he heard five shots separated by one to two seconds each and saw the silhouette of a man with his hand in the air standing near the building’s underground parking garage.
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Officers found six 9mm shell casings and one live round outside the garage. Inside the garage, most of the vehicles were dusty and inoperable, but one stood out, a maroon GMC Yukon that appeared to be in regular use. Officers traced the vehicle to a resident in the building.
Upstairs, officers heard an argument coming from the registered owner’s apartment. A woman told officers her boyfriend, Johnson, had come home intoxicated and was yelling about infidelity. Officers saw Johnson inside the apartment wearing a black t-shirt, blue sweatpants and light-colored Croc-style shoes.
Surveillance video from the garage told the rest of the story, according to the complaint. The footage showed the maroon Yukon pulling into the garage. A man wearing a Chicago White Sox hat, a black sweatshirt with a white logo on the back, blue sweatpants, a large pendant necklace and black shoes with white accents got out
He walked to the front of the Yukon, opened the hood, reached into the engine compartment and took out a firearm. He then walked out of the garage, dropped the gun on the ground, picked it back up and walked away from the building.
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Officers obtained a GPS warrant to track the Yukon. On April 15, they followed it to a business in Crystal and saw Johnson get out of the driver’s seat wearing a Chicago White Sox hat, a black sweatshirt with a white logo and a large pendant necklace, all matching the clothing from the garage surveillance video.
On April 23, officers tracked the Yukon to Minneapolis and watched Johnson get in and drive north on Oakland Avenue. When the vehicle parked on Nicollet Avenue, officers moved in and arrested him without incident. A search of the Yukon and Johnson’s apartment did not turn up a firearm.
Johnson is prohibited from possessing firearms due to multiple prior felony convictions, including two counts of felony domestic assault in 2020, a felony domestic assault conviction in 2018 and a first-degree aggravated robbery conviction in 2010.
The felon-in-possession charge carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison with a five-year mandatory minimum. The reckless discharge charge carries up to two years.
