FARGO (KFGO) – A south Fargo apartment building was evacuated on Friday and multiple law enforcement agencies including U.S. Marshals, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) were on hand to search a rental unit on the building’s third floor believed to have been the suspect’s in the shooting that left one officer dead and two others critically wounded earlier in the day.
Law enforcement roped off the parking lot of the Bluemont Village Apartments at 2801 23rd Ave. S. just before 6:00 p.m. Residents were evacuated and told they would not likely be allowed back into the building until sometime on Saturday. Some were told that the search of the suspect’s apartment would not start until much later because law enforcement was awaiting a federal warrant.
Just before midnight a remote-controlled law enforcement robot entered the building’s main entrance and a Fargo Fire Department platform truck with an aerial ladder and basket was used to inspect the apartment from the back balcony side. A drone was also utilized in the initial investigation before authorities entered the unit.
An FBI agent told some residents who were still standing on the sidewalk that law enforcement wouldn’t likely be finished with the search until 4:00 a.m. or later.
A number of the residents said they planned to sleep in their cars. Some found extra beds at a friend or family member’s home. One man said he called all the hotels he could think of and asked at all the missions and homeless shelters but every place he tried was booked. One woman who lived in the building along with her elderly wheelchair-bound parents said she didn’t know where they would go to stay. Throughout the night various groups of residents were escorted by law enforcement into the building briefly to get medications or feed pets that were left behind inside.
Most residents who were still present at the scene near midnight when a law enforcement spotlight and drone appeared to identify the apartment unit authorities were targeting for their search said they did not know the person who had lived in that unit.
Some residents said they did know the man who had lived there, however. They said he had only lived there a few months and kept to himself. One said she’d seen the man from that unit in the property management office earlier Friday, upset about something. Another claimed she’d seen him in his garage in the early afternoon hours Friday.
Fargo Police say the shooting happened around 3:00 p.m. near the intersection of 25th Street and 9th Avenue S., less than a five minute drive from the alleged suspect’s apartment. They say one officer died in the shooting and two more are in critical condition. Police say the suspect was also seriously injured during the shooting and later died. Another civilian sustained serious injuries in the shooting.
Residents were allowed back into their units at 7 a.m. Saturday.
Fargo Police will host a press conference at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Fargo City Hall to provide additional information related to the incident.
I Moved here thinking Fargo was a safe place to live wanting to live a peacful life but it starting to look like i made the wrong decision and the police here are very kind why would someone do that to them
It is more than too late to start making some cogent gun laws. The lack of background checks involving photo id,fingerprints, proof of a past :free of felonious and violence/assault behavior is egregiously lacking. I am in favor of private gun ownership, however,high capacity magazines which can be fired as quickly as a finger pull which can deliver 20 shots or more in seconds before a 3 second magazine change allowing the same thing is insane. This kind of ” firepower” is ridiculously dangerous with a proven criminal track record of innocent carnage. Every gun owner isn’t the problem but that doesn’t remove the fact that high capacity magazines carry the ” problem” much faster downrange with devastating effects. The lukewarm, over used argument that law abiding gun ownership is not the problem and that criminals aren’t law abiding just doesn’t address the fact that high capacity magazines are readily available for purchase or for being stolen by criminals from law abiding citizens,or purchased by criminals at gun shows etc. The 2nd Ammendment ensures private gun ownership but high capacity magazines are being used to kill innocent people and that is irrefutable.