The St. Paul Police Department released videos Tuesday of officers shooting a man who is accused of pointing a gun at police at Snelling and University avenues last week.

Earl Bennett, 40, remains hospitalized in critical but stable condition, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating.

Excerpts of the officers’ videos can be seen on the police department’s YouTube page.

Earl Bennett is seen in a May 20, 2024, booking photo. (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Prosecutors charged Bennett Monday with murder in an Oct. 27 shooting at a homeless encampment in Minneapolis that killed three people. Bennett is also charged with attempted murder in a shooting of another resident at a sober home in Minneapolis on Oct. 28, about two-and-a-half hours before police officers encountered him in St. Paul.

“Our city experienced another episode of gun violence last week,” Police Chief Axel Henry said in a statement Tuesday. “Our officers responded to one of the busiest intersections in our state for a person shooting a gun. Given the location, time of day, and number of motorists, light-rail users, and people on foot and bicycles in the area, I am thankful more people weren’t injured.”

He said the police department is committed “to being transparent and releasing body-camera footage as soon as possible.”

“No one, including the police officers that are tasked with responding to these calls, wants these outcomes. We must all work together to stop the violence in our community,” Henry’s statement said.

Held gun to own head before pointing it, charges say

On Oct. 28, St. Paul officers were called to Pierce Street near University Avenue just before 7:45 p.m. on Oct. 28. Several people reported shots had been fired in the area.

“We have no information to indicate any of our officers knew his identity or of his past actions prior to encountering him,” said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman, last week.

An officer dispatched that he saw a man, identified as Bennett, walking south on Snelling Avenue toward University Avenue with a gun in his hand, according to a criminal complaint against Bennett filed last Tuesday in Ramsey County.

The officer also reported that Bennett wouldn’t drop the gun and kept walking. He held the handgun to his own head, walked in the middle of traffic lanes and on the median between lanes on Snelling Avenue. He stopped in the middle of light-rail train tracks. A witness reported that Bennett told the police to shoot him.

Officers negotiated with him to put the gun down, but he would not, Ernster said last week.

Police said they fired nonlethal rounds at Bennett to try to get him to drop the gun. Bennett pointed his gun at officers, according to the complaint.

Four officers fired handguns or rifles, the BCA said last week.

A 9 mm handgun that Bennett dropped after he was shot did not hold a magazine; it had a round of ammunition in its chamber, the complaint said. The gun was a match to casings found at the encampment and sober house shootings, according to the complaint charging him with three counts of murder in Minneapolis.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Bennett last Tuesday with second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, for pointing a gun at police, and possession of a firearm by a person ineligible because of a conviction for a crime of violence. Bennett has eight past felony convictions, of which five were for first-degree aggravated robberies, and those convictions make him ineligible to possess firearms or ammunition, according to the complaint.

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