Mother of teen injured in Minneapolis triple shooting calls for community to 'wake up'

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A mother is calling for change from the community after a bullet hit her teenage son during a shooting in north Minneapolis earlier this week.

“He was going to get a cake, a little Debbie cake,” said Erica Harris.

The moment when she first learned her son, 14-year-old Elijah Boswell, was caught in the middle of an exchange of gunfire is still fresh in her memory.

“I ran out of my job, I started running down the street - I wasn’t even in a car,” said Harris.

The shots rang out early Monday evening in the Near North community in north Minneapolis. Boswell, a straight-A student who was stopping at a nearby store for snacks, is among three victims.

“I don’t understand how this happened to one of our babies in our community,” said Harris.

A bullet tore through the eighth grader's cheek.

“He just woke up, upstairs just now and I felt so bad," said Harris through tears. "I was trying to tell him that we are here and he can’t even see."

Harris says that she’s been complaining to community leaders about the growing gang violence and drugs on West Broadway Avenue and Lyndale Avenue North for months.

“I’ve been complaining about how the gang violence have picked up over there, but they’ve done nothing,” said Harris. “But now you reach out to me after my baby has been hurt to say, ‘You’re sorry?’ when you could have implemented some type of program prior to.”

Boswell, along with two other men survived this most recent shooting. Harris is calling for an end to the violence before another person is hurt.

“My message is, ‘Hey, when are we going to wake up? When are we going to wake up?’” said Harris. “My son is alive by the grace of God, the blood was upon him. But what if the next casualty don’t make it?”

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