A 38-year-old woman was shot from a vehicle in Cass Lake early Wednesday morning, and the person responsible remains unidentified. The Cass County Sheriff's Office received reports of gunfire at 5:25 a.m. in the 300 block of Balsam Avenue Northwest, and the vehicle involved had already left the scene by the time authorities responded.
According to Valley News Live, the woman was struck by gunfire fired from the vehicle before it fled. She was treated at the scene for serious but non-life-threatening injuries and then taken to Sanford Health in Bemidji for further care, per the sheriff's office. No description of the suspect or the vehicle has been released.
Two Agencies Working the Case
The Cass County Sheriff's Office is continuing to investigate the shooting with the assistance of the Leech Lake Tribal Police Department, according to lptv.org. The outlet reported that the woman's injuries, while serious, were not considered life-threatening at the time she was treated and transferred. Her name has not been released, and the Cass County Sheriff's Department has provided no further information about the circumstances of the shooting, the Brainerd Dispatch reported.
No arrest has been announced, and it remains unclear what led to the shooting or whether it is connected to other recent violence in the small Beltrami/Cass County community. The Brainerd Dispatch's report characterized Wednesday's shooting as the second one investigated in Cass Lake within the past couple of months, though the paper did not detail a link between the cases.
A String of Recent Shootings
Cass Lake has seen a handful of shootings investigated in recent months. In one separate incident in a rural area outside town, a 39-year-old man arrived at Cass Lake Indian Health Services with a gunshot wound, the same lptv.org report noted. Authorities in that case identified and secured a vehicle connected to the shooting, executed search warrants, and searched nearby residences as part of their investigation.
Earlier, 17-year-old Walker teen Dylon Oothoudt died from a gunshot wound on Sept. 13, according to the Brainerd Dispatch's earlier coverage.
For now, Wednesday's shooting adds to a troubling pattern of gun violence in the small northern Minnesota city, with investigators from both the Cass County Sheriff's Office and the Leech Lake Tribal Police Department working to track down the person who fired from the fleeing vehicle on Balsam Avenue.
