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MINNEAPOLIMEDIA NEWS | Reports Show Red-Flag Gun Removal Was Considered Weeks Before Loring Park Mass Shooting
New details sharpen questions about whether Minnesota's extreme-risk protection system could have removed Carlton Johnson II's firearm before Wednesday's attack.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN (September 5, 2026). New reporting about the months preceding Wednesday's deadly Shoreline Plaza mass shooting is sharpening scrutiny of Minnesota's red-flag law after authorities considered whether alleged threats by the suspected gunman could support removing his access to firearms.
Carlton Neal Johnson II, 35, killed two Shoreline Plaza residents and wounded several other people, including two Minneapolis police officers, before he was fatally shot by officers Wednesday, according to investigators.
MinneapoliMedia reported Friday that Johnson had accumulated a documented history of threatening behavior, housing disputes and allegations involving firearms before the attack.
New information now places Minnesota's Extreme Risk Protection Order system directly inside that timeline.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Johnson had been flagged for potential gun-threat charges and consideration of a red-flag order weeks before the shooting.
Minnesota's red-flag law allows certain people, including law-enforcement agencies and members of a person's household or family, to ask a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order when they believe someone poses a significant danger of causing bodily harm with a firearm.
A qualifying order can temporarily prohibit the person from possessing firearms and require firearms to be surrendered.
The existence of the law, however, does not mean every reported threat automatically satisfies its legal standard.
That distinction is now at the center of the Shoreline Plaza investigation.
Johnson had allegedly displayed firearms, threatened residents and behaved aggressively inside the apartment building during the months before the shooting.
Building management initiated eviction proceedings in June.
Court records described an episode in which Johnson allegedly walked through the building with a gun while making threats.
Another resident subsequently alleged Johnson assaulted him and threatened him with a handgun.
The Hennepin County Attorney's Office reviewed an August case involving Johnson but concluded that the available evidence likely would not support a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
Prosecutors have also said there was insufficient evidence available to them at that point to obtain an order requiring Johnson's firearms to be removed.
That explanation does not end the inquiry.
It defines it.
The central question is no longer merely whether police, prosecutors, landlords or neighbors knew Johnson could behave aggressively.
The question is what information each institution possessed, whether those pieces of information were connected, who had legal authority to seek an Extreme Risk Protection Order and whether Minnesota's current process allows intervention early enough when threats are spread across multiple systems.
The Associated Press reported that police, courts and prosecutors had encountered portions of Johnson's history, but no intervention ultimately prevented him from maintaining access to a firearm before Wednesday.
Authorities have cautioned that allegations, civil restraining orders and eviction proceedings do not necessarily make someone legally prohibited from possessing firearms.
That is an important legal distinction.
It is equally important that Minnesota enacted its red-flag process specifically to create a mechanism for temporary firearm removal before conduct necessarily reaches the level required for a conventional criminal conviction.
The BCA continues investigating Johnson's firearm eligibility, permit status and the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
The investigation will therefore have implications beyond determining what happened inside Shoreline Plaza Wednesday afternoon.
It may also provide one of the first major tests of whether Minnesota's relatively new Extreme Risk Protection Order system works as lawmakers intended when warning signs emerge before mass violence.
Two residents are dead.
Several others were wounded.
And the emerging public-policy question is no longer theoretical:
Minnesota had a red-flag law.
Could it have been used in time?
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