A 14-year-old was shot in the leg Wednesday night on St. Paul's Greater East Side, and police took a 17-year-old male into custody in connection with the shooting. The wounded teen was brought to a hospital in a private vehicle rather than by ambulance, and investigators were still working to determine exactly what led up to the gunfire.
Police determined the shooting happened in the 1100 block of Supornick Lane, according to the Pioneer Press. That stretch of street sits near Hazelwood Street and Maryland Avenue in a Greater East Side neighborhood that includes public housing developments managed by the St. Paul Public Housing Agency. St. Paul Police spokesperson Alyssa Arcand said the gunshot wound victim was taken by private vehicle to M Health Fairview St. John's Hospital in Maplewood, where officers were then called.
The report notes that police took the older teen into custody the same night, identifying him as a 17-year-old male. The younger teen's exact condition was not detailed beyond the leg wound, and the circumstances that led to the shooting remained under investigation as of the initial report.
What a Firearm Charge Could Mean for the Teen Suspect
If Ramsey County prosecutors pursue a felony firearm charge against the 17-year-old, Minnesota law creates a presumption that the case moves to adult court. Under Minnesota Statutes Section 260B.125, that presumption applies to 16- and 17-year-olds charged with a felony involving a firearm, and the defense bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that keeping the case in juvenile court would still serve public safety, according to Sieben Cotter Law. No charges had been announced at the time of the initial report, and it remains unresolved whether prosecutors will seek adult certification.
The Supornick Lane shooting adds to a run of teen-involved gun violence on St. Paul's East Side this year. In June, police responded to an overnight shooting in nearby Dayton's Bluff that left a 17-year-old boy shot in the back alongside an 18-year-old victim, as Hoodline previously reported. And in March, an online argument among teenagers escalated into a crossfire shooting at an East Side gas station that wounded a 54-year-old bystander, leading Ramsey County prosecutors to charge two 20-year-olds and a 14-year-old, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of that case.
A City Already Tracking a Rise in Violence
The shooting lands amid a broader spike in serious violence across St. Paul this year. The city had recorded 13 homicides through mid-August 2026, compared to seven over the same span in 2025, an 85% year-over-year increase even as violent crime declined nationally among major cities in the first half of the year, Hoodline has reported.
St. Paul police do have specialized tools for investigating non-fatal shootings like the one that wounded the 14-year-old. The department's Non-Fatal Shooting Unit, launched in January 2024 to treat bullet-wound cases with the same intensity as homicides, raised the city's clearance rate on non-fatal shootings from 39% in 2023 to 71% in 2025, while the number of non-fatal shooting incidents dropped from 122 to 73 over that period, according to Police1. The unit's success prompted the Minnesota House to approve $1 million in May for a statewide grant program modeled on it, aimed at helping other departments replicate the approach.
Outside law enforcement, the city has also leaned on community-based intervention to try to keep young people out of shootings altogether. An August evaluation by the Minnesota Justice Research Center found that Project PEACE, launched in 2022 under St. Paul's Office of Neighborhood Safety, has effectively reduced youth gun violence by pairing high-risk youth with dedicated life coaches for community-led intervention, per the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. Statewide, a July report by Protect Minnesota found firearm homicides fell nearly 20% in 2025 compared to 2024, though Black Minnesotans accounted for 41% of homicide victims and nearly 70% of victims lived in the seven-county Twin Cities metro, according to BringMeTheNews.
No further details on the 14-year-old's condition or the specific circumstances that triggered Wednesday's shooting had been released as investigators continued their work.
