A Minneapolis-area educator is angry after a recent string of violent attacks left three teenage students dead in the last five weeks.
North High School Principal Mauri Melander Friestleben said the city was “out of control” after 17-year-old student Andre Conley was gunned down outside a Minneapolis convenience store on Monday.
“We are literally in a city right now that is completely and entirely out of control,” Friestleben said in a Facebook post this week. “We know that the world feels topsy-turvy right now, and we’re not going to be quiet about it.”
Dozens of Minneapolis Public Schools principals joined Friestleben to raise awareness of the recent surge of violence as more than 380 people have been shot in the city this year, marking the highest number in more than 15 years.
“Three weeks ago, we lost a 17-year-old female student, and two weeks before that, another MPS student was killed in what has been a relentless and devastating spate of violence this summer in Minneapolis,” Friestleben said.
Speaking with KARE 11 on Wednesday, Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Ed Graff said he was disappointed that gun control activism had not led to less gun violence in the city.
“My biggest concern right now is that we become too despondent to these events, and we normalize them,” Graff said. “Two years ago, our students in Minneapolis Public Schools sent a very strong message. They had concerns about the gun violence that was happening. And here we are still addressing this.”
Minneapolis has been an epicenter of protests and violence since George Floyd died while in the custody of the city’s police department, setting off months of demonstrations across the United States that, in some cases, have turned destructive.
