A 46-year-old Minneapolis man already barred from owning a gun because of two prior violent felony convictions is now facing five felony counts after allegedly opening fire on another man in the middle of a South Minneapolis street last month. Donald Edward Bradley Jr. was arrested on August 17 on a $500,000 warrant, five days after Hennepin County prosecutors filed charges accusing him of firing at least three shots at a victim near 12th Avenue.
According to a criminal complaint cited by MN Crime, Minneapolis police responded to a reported shooting near 12th Avenue just before 2 a.m. on July 17. The victim, described only as an adult male, was standing on the sidewalk east of the avenue when a man carrying a bag approached and then fired at least three shots from the middle of the street, according to the complaint. The victim ran north away from the gunfire and suffered multiple gunshot wounds, while the shooter fled westbound through an alley toward 11th Avenue, still carrying the bag.
Surveillance video captured both the shooting itself and the shooter's movements before and after the attack, per the complaint. Investigators say the footage showed the man wearing a black medical shoe on his left foot, a detail that helped police track him roughly four blocks from the scene of the shooting to an apartment building, which he entered about 10 minutes after the gunfire, according to the complaint. A witness familiar with Bradley identified him as the shooter, the complaint states.
What Police Found at the Apartment
Officers recovered four discharged cartridge casings in the street near the shooting scene, according to the complaint. About two weeks later, on July 31, officers executed a search warrant at the apartment building where surveillance video had tracked the suspect. There, they say they recovered a grocery sack matching the one seen in the surveillance footage, along with a round of rifle ammunition and a gun trigger lock — though officers did not recover an actual firearm at the location, per the complaint. The complaint also states that the man seen fleeing with the bag on surveillance video handed it to a person who rented an apartment in the building.
Bradley now faces attempted murder in the first degree, attempted murder in the second degree, second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, and two counts of possessing a firearm or ammunition after a conviction for a crime of violence, according to the charges filed in Hennepin County District Court on August 12. His firearm ban traces back to a 2003 felony conviction for second-degree assault with a firearm and a 2015 felony conviction for terroristic threats, both of which carry lifetime weapons prohibitions under Minnesota law, as detailed in a summary of the case shared by Minnesota Now.
A Nationwide Warrant Over Public Safety Concerns
Rather than seek a standard court summons, Hennepin County prosecutors requested a nationwide arrest warrant for Bradley on August 12, citing acute public safety concerns tied to his violent criminal history and the street shooting, according to a report from Minneapolis Right Now. Judges typically issue summonses for routine felony filings, so the elevated request signals how seriously investigators viewed the risk of letting Bradley remain free while charges were pending. Bradley was booked into the Hennepin County Jail at roughly 1:15 p.m. on August 17, five days after the warrant was signed.
Minnesota Department of Corrections records show Bradley was under active supervised probation with the Hennepin Department of Community Corrections at the time of his arrest, on a sentence running through July 2027 that began in October 2022. That supervision status is part of why he was legally prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition and now faces an additional state corrections hold on top of the new felony charges.
What Bradley Could Face in Prison
Under Minnesota Statute § 609.17, punishment for a criminal attempt is capped at no more than half the maximum penalty for the completed offense, meaning both the attempted first-degree and attempted second-degree murder counts against Bradley carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, according to the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. That stands in sharp contrast to the mandatory life sentence attached to a completed first-degree murder conviction. Separately, under Minnesota Statutes §§ 624.713 and 609.11, a conviction on the felon-in-possession counts alone would trigger a mandatory minimum of 60 months in state prison, according to a breakdown from Sieben Cotter Law, since Bradley has a prior conviction for a crime of violence. A court date has not yet been set.
Part of a Broader Push on Non-Fatal Shootings
The case lands amid a citywide effort to more aggressively investigate shootings where the victim survives. In May, Minneapolis city leaders launched the $2 million Firearm Assault Shoot Team, a multi-agency task force designed to bring homicide-level investigative resources to non-fatal shootings, according to MPR News. The unit was modeled on a St. Paul initiative credited with doubling non-fatal shooting clearance rates, which had historically hovered between 27% and 40% in Minneapolis. In its first three months of operation through June, the task force responded to 46 non-fatal shooting incidents involving 62 victims citywide, per a report from WCCO.
A national mid-year crime study released in July by the Council on Criminal Justice found Minneapolis homicides dropped 30% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, yet the city remained one of only four studied nationwide where homicide rates stayed above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. The East Lake Street corridor, where this shooting occurred, has been the site of repeated violent crime this year. Hoodline previously reported on a 60-year-old man charged with attempted second-degree murder after shooting his wife near 13th Avenue South and East Lake Street earlier this month.
