A domestic assault suspect was shot and wounded by St. Paul police Monday morning just outside the emergency entrance of Regions Hospital, after officers responding to a 911 call chased down a man reported to be armed. The confrontation unfolded on the 200 block of East 12th Street, only about five blocks from where the original assault was reported roughly 20 minutes earlier.
According to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, St. Paul police officers arrived at the 400 block of Temperance Street around 9:15 a.m. after a 911 caller reported a domestic assault and said the suspect was armed and had already left the scene. The suspect then turned up outside Regions Hospital on East 12th Street, where the encounter with officers escalated into gunfire and left him injured. As reported by FOX 9, the site where officers confronted the suspect sits roughly five blocks southeast of the hospital's main trauma facility, illustrating just how quickly the situation moved from a residential domestic dispute to a shooting steps from an emergency room.
Officers Rendered Aid Before Suspect Was Taken Inside
Per the same reporting, no police officers were hurt in the exchange. St. Paul police say the suspect is being treated at Regions Hospital, though his current condition and identity have not been released. KARE 11 reports that officers immediately rendered emergency medical aid to the suspect at the scene before he was moved inside the hospital for further treatment.
The location of the shooting is notable given what Regions Hospital represents for the region. Situated at 640 Jackson Street with emergency drive entrances along East 12th Street, Regions is operated by HealthPartners and serves as the primary Level I Adult and Pediatric Trauma Center for Ramsey County and the East Metro, according to HealthPartners. It's the same emergency room that treated victims of a separate shooting on West Maryland Avenue in the city's North End, which Hoodline reported just two days before this incident, underscoring how central the facility is to acute trauma care in downtown St. Paul.
State Investigators Now Handling the Case
The St. Paul Police Department has asked the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate the use-of-force incident, per department protocol. That handoff isn't discretionary: under Minnesota Statute § 299C.80, enacted in 2020, the BCA maintains a dedicated Force Investigations Unit tasked with conducting independent criminal investigations whenever law enforcement use of force results in death or bodily injury, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. The law was intended to remove local departments from investigating their own officers and to bolster public trust in the outcome.
Whether body-camera footage from the encounter becomes public soon is an open question. The Minnesota Department of Administration Data Practices Office notes that Minnesota Statute § 13.825 classifies police body-worn camera footage as private data, but requires public release within 14 days only when force results in death — leaving the timing for non-fatal shootings like this one up to the discretion of investigators, as explained by the Minnesota Department of Administration. Saint Paul Police Department policy revised in May also bars officers involved in critical force incidents from reviewing their own footage before completing formal interviews with state agents, per the city's police manual.
A Pattern of High-Stakes Domestic Calls in St. Paul
This is not the first time a St. Paul domestic violence response has ended in an officer-involved shooting reviewed by the BCA. In December 2023, a St. Paul officer was wounded and suspect Brandon Keys was fatally shot during a gunfire exchange tied to a domestic order-of-protection violation on Cretin Avenue, a case the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension also handled independently, according to CBS News.
Ramsey County carries one of the higher domestic violence burdens in the Twin Cities metro, with county crime data showing it has the second-highest domestic violence assault rate among metro-area counties. Those calls remain among the most volatile for responding officers, a dynamic that has pushed the department toward more structured investigative response. Hoodline previously detailed how St. Paul treats every shooting like a homicide, a Non-Fatal Shooting Unit created in January 2024 that helped raise the city's shooting clearance rate from 39% in 2023 to over 60%.
For now, key details remain unresolved: what specifically happened in the moments before officers opened fire outside the hospital, the suspect's identity, and his medical status beyond being treated at Regions Hospital have not been disclosed. Those answers are expected to emerge, if at all, through the BCA's independent investigation in the weeks ahead.
