Minneapolis restaurant owner recovering after pellet gun shooting

(FOX 9) - A north Minneapolis soul food restaurant is forced to temporarily close after the head chef and owner was shot with a pellet gun.

The incident happened Friday evening in the Jordan neighborhood as Wendy Puckett was gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“She’s a pillar in the community and all she does is outreach, and for this to happen to her or anyone, it’s just sad,” said Heather Warfield, Puckett’s sister.

Wendy Puckett of Wendy’s House of SOUL is off the job and in the hospital after she was shot in the face with a pellet gun.

“Someone in a vehicle was driving by, and as she turned they shot her in the face,” Warfield said. “The pellet entered through one side, through her nose - so there’s a hole in her nose - and lodged on the other side. So right now, it’s underneath her eye on the other side.”

Warfield also works at the restaurant, which was forced to shut down less than a week before the holiday, one of their busiest times of the year.

“This just hurts for this to have happened, anytime, but for sure this week,” she said.

In a search for suspects, authorities are reviewing surveillance video and looking into a string of other pellet-gun related incidents.

As for Puckett, it isn't a matter of if she'll re-open, but when.

“One of the biggest things that we are saying is that we will be back here. We are temporarily closed, and we’re making that very clear that we are coming back here. This is not going to stop us from being on the north side or being at this location,” Warfield said.

Warfield believes that this was a random attack. As Wendy recovers, the community is raising money through an online fundraiser, which can be found here.