March 31, 2022 at about 9:15 pm about 40 shots broke the peace of the evening at the Maryland Supermarket at Maryland Avenue West and Arundel Street. When St Paul Police arrived they found a young man dying in the middle of Maryland Avenue and another man was wounded, not injured as the local press would say. They could not save the man in the street as he died of his gunshot wounds, while the other man was rushed to Regions Hospital.
April 3, 2022 at about 2 pm there was a shooting just north of the Maryland Avenue intersection with Arundel. There were shots fired near a Silver Sports Sedan and a victim was later transported from the scene.
Violent Crime Had Returned to My Neighborhood
I, Publius Jr, know these incidents could have been avoided because I live near the problem property of the Maryland Supermarket.
I missed the first shooting on March 31st by 35 minutes as I had caught a bus prior to the shooting to go grocery shopping in Roseville MN’s Har Mar Cub Foods store.
Upon returning on the 3A bus route the driver had informed riders she was detouring around the police activity down the street and if anyone needed to get to a destination between Dale & Virginia St to get off the bus at Dale St. I did so. Normally I ride the 3A so I can get off at Arundel as it’s only a block and a half away from my place, this is why I avoided taking the 65 bus that night.
I took this photo from near the Kent St Railroad Overpass on Maryland Avenue West, dreading what was still a mystery to me at that point in time.
When I approached the scene at Norton St and Maryland next to the coin laundromat everything had Police tape around it except a path around the Low income apartment complex Princeton Place, so I took that shortcut. I should’ve taken some photos, but I didn’t want the cops to delay myself longer than I had to, and I had 3 plastic grocery bags to struggle with. Once I got to my place I went online to find out what happened. I also turned on Broadcastify a scanner online to determine what happened and Twitter was a better source of information.
The next day April Fools day, there was nothing to joke about, my neighborhood had another notch on it’s belt for violent crime. There have been several since the new owner of the Maryland Supermarket took over some time ago.
No Shortage of Complaints
The St Paul Police Department has had no shortage of complaints about the Maryland Supermarket. It has a regular patrol in which a squad car will sit near the convenience store a block down from it to monitor the store. They also have a camera on the telephone pole northeast of the property.
With all the surveillance of the property the City Elders can’t pretend they don’t know anything is happening there. They know and yet they still let it exist.
In the Summer of 2021 Ramsey County Zoning Board solicited testimony from residents mostly through email. I sent in my testimony saying the property is a suspected drug front, as I had seen drugs being sold in the parking lot as I waited for the 3A Bus line.
During the Summer of Covid in 2020, I had reported on 2 car accidents that took place at the intersection that happened within days of each other. I’m puzzled why the business is allowed to exist as I’ve heard of businesses being denied a location due to the lack of adequate parking space. The amount of business traffic seen at the store makes for a large amount of overflow parking within a block or two from the store.
I’m sure my phone number has been put on a list at the St Paul Police Department of concerned neighbors that will report either direct or indirect complaints about the store. Mostly I report gun shots heard. I can’t always tell where the gun shots come from as I live near Wheelock Ridge and it tends to bounce noises originating from other locations. Too bad there isn’t a shot spotter. Last Fall I reported shots fired to 911, and a half hour later I got a call from the St Paul Police Department asking where I thought the shots came from and I thought it was north of where I live. Forty Minutes roughly later a different officer called asking me about where I thought the shots had originated. I gave the same answer. A month later I got a letter from a SPPD Detective telling me they could not locate the origin of the shots fired. I thought it was nice they went the extra mile, but it wasn’t necessary to send me a letter. Sometimes it’s hard to discern the direction the shots come from being that there are trains that move through the area and occasionally brakes will bang out a noise that sounds like a gun shot, and also the corridor the train goes through will echo shots from further away. There is also a rise in fireworks shot at different times of the night outside of normal fireworks season around the Fourth of July and New Years Day.
Violent Crime Could’ve been Avoided
Earlier in this article I mentioned that the violent crime could have been avoided and here is how I would know this.
In 2019 I was in a Work Program at the VA Hospital where I would have a job there while I looked for another job, it is called, Compensated Work Therapy (CWT). I would catch the bus every morning 3A to A-Line, to Blue Line to the VA Hospital Station. It’s roughly about a 40 minute trip. One afternoon upon getting off of the bus I noticed the Sign foundation at the Maryland Supermarket had some of the cinder blocks busted off of the foundation. I thought some troubled youth might use the shards to break windows of cars or harm others with it. So I sent a note to my councilwoman Amy Brendmoen. She contacted the property owner and for a full month nothing happened. Then in an unrelated incident at the property a man was murdered while he sat in his car. When I came back from work that day, there were cops all about.
At left you can see the foundation of the sign broken which I had complained about a month before the murder. The balloons and candles are at where the murder took place.
For more than a year, balloons and candles were located at the corner of the parking lot to commemorate the location where the young man was murdered while he sat in his car in May of 2019.
This isn’t Localized in St Paul
I made the acquaintance of a Pastor in North Minneapolis in the weeks after the George Floyd riots of late May early June 2020. I started following him on his Twitter account. He would talk about the insanity of violent crime in North Minneapolis. He has been at it for over 20 years. He believes just like I do that some areas are allowed to have violent crime and drugs being sold near those locations. I had mentioned seeing high end sedans and sports coupes near the Maryland Supermarket and a barbershop several blocks to the east of that location. Why would someone park a Maserati Quattroporte in a blue collar neighborhood? It seems out of place like a car on cinder blocks in Beverly Hills. He said if you see Ford F-150s in the parking lot of the supermarket then it’s probably someone from the suburbs there to buy drugs.
His problem property is in the area of a liquor store and a gas station at the intersection of Broadway & Lyndale in North Minneapolis. Shots fired there are quite common. The Police know what’s going on there. I know the neighborhood and it’s creepy during the day time. I had to take a Creative Job Search Seminar at the Career Center nearby at the start of the VA’s CWT program. One time I had nodded off on the bus and had missed my stop by about 4 blocks. When I exited the bus I walked with a purpose a bit quicker than normal to get to the Career Center. North Minneapolis has a bad reputation for a reason. I felt out of place. I had asked the VA to relocate that Job Seminar somewhere else as I didn’t feel safe there. Read that again as: I’m a US Army Veteran and I was afraid for my safety in that neighborhood near Lyndale & Broadway.
Maryland Supermarket Sued the City of St Paul
After Ramsey County voted unanimously to rezone the property where the Maryland Supermarket and Golden Grill are located to be residential, the owner of the convenience store sued the City of St Paul. They cited the denial of their tobacco store will effectively put them out of business. Throughout the year prior to that ruling they would openly advertise menthol cigarettes sold there, which was in violation of a city ordinance banning such products to be sold in St Paul.
The owner of the Maryland Supermarket can claim he knows nothing about the drug sales around his property or that he is related to anyone who does sell there, but prior to him buying the store, that element did not exist at the store. There were no thugs hanging around harassing people who lived nearby. There were no gunshots fired in the neighborhood that related directly or indirectly to the customers of the store.
If the store owner would like to expand his business he should move somewhere else where there is more parking. He seems to have a healthy business there. The parking lot is too small for his clientele. The City of St Paul should help him move out of the neighborhood to a more commercial property. I bet the crime and violence will move out of the neighborhood with him. Maybe it won’t.
The Residents of My Neighborhood Deserve Better.
The City of St Paul and Ramsey County seemed to have made a decision to not be sued and let the citizens of my neighborhood be in a continued state of danger from an unwelcome element. They are okay with the drug dealers selling their product, and thugs shooting indiscriminately, not caring if a innocent bystander is wounded or killed.
This should be an issue that Elected City Council members should try to correct instead of sweeping it under the rug. Since they don’t live here it must be okay as long as the violence doesn’t spill into their neighborhood. Their inaction of not removing this element from the neighborhood has produced over a couple thousand Police calls since 2016, several shootings, and people killed and wounded.
The first comment my friends said when they heard me telling them about the shootings was, “Can you move?” My response was I shouldn’t have to move, the people causing it should have to move or be arrested.
The Police photo is from an article Fred Melo, a reporter from the Pioneer Press published on September 22, 2021. The original story is called “Maryland Ave. tobacco store owner sues the city of St Paul over license denial.” ~~ Publius Jr.