Carlos Lernard Rogers, a 24-year-old Black male, was shot multiple times late on July 7, 2020, in north Minneapolis. Around 11:19 p.m., police were dispatched to the 2100 block of Emerson Avenue North after a ShotSpotter activation and a burst of 911 calls reporting gunfire and screaming. Officers arrived to find two men in their early 20s wounded by gunfire; Rogers had been struck several times.
First responders rushed him from the scene, but he died shortly thereafter and the Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled his death a homicide. The second victim survived his injuries.
Details sketched a sudden, close-range ambush: Rogers and another man were seated in a vehicle when shots rang out on the quiet residential block, leaving spent casings scattered and neighbors jolted awake. The medical examiner identified Rogers by name and age and confirmed multiple gunshot wounds as the cause of death. He was pronounced dead less than an hour after the shooting at North Memorial Health Hospital in Robbinsdale, while detectives canvassed the area, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses in hopes of tracing the gunfire back to whoever pulled the trigger.
In the hours following the attack, police said there had been no arrests and did not publicly identify any suspects, even as the case added to a spate of overnight violence in the city. Subsequent local reporting noted the lack of immediate leads or custody in the case, and authorities did not announce any arrests linked to Rogers’s killing in those early accounts. The investigation remained an open homicide inquiry.
