On the evening of May 29, 2021, a street altercation in Minneapolis tragically cut short the life of 19-year-old Edwin Lydell Vaughn Jr., a Black male. The incident unfolded in the 2600 block of N. Upton Avenue just after 9 p.m.. Events leading up to the fatal shooting began with arguments between Vaughn and his girlfriend. She informed him that her brother wanted to fight him, setting the stage for a physical confrontation.
Surrounded by onlookers, Vaughn and the girlfriend's brother
began to fight. During the altercation, three gunshots suddenly rang out, and Vaughn reacted as if he had been struck. He was privately transported to North Memorial Health Hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, where he later succumbed to his injuries. Minneapolis police officers initially responded to the report of a shooting but found no victim at the scene, learning only later that a man with a gunshot wound had arrived at the hospital.
The investigation into Vaughn's death, which marked the city's 34th homicide of the year, led to the arrest of a teenager. In October 2021, Devonte M. Sletten, a 17-year-old from Brooklyn Park who was 16 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder. Investigators utilized video surveillance from a nearby home, which reportedly captured Sletten standing next to a car and firing three times before getting back into the vehicle and fleeing the scene. According to the criminal complaint, members of Vaughn's family told investigators that Sletten admitted in phone conversations that he started shooting to "'clear the scene'". Sletten was taken into custody and held on $600,000 bail.
