BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — Editor's note: The video above first aired on Dec. 1, 2022.
Charges are being considered after a weekend incident led police to confiscate three "ghost guns" in Brooklyn Center.
The incident began late Saturday when officers were called to a hotel on the 2500 block of Freeway Boulevard by staff members reporting four young men who were refusing to leave the premises after being asked repeatedly to do so.
Squads arrived to find the suspects leaving the hotel and reportedly attempting to escape the scene. Police detained the young men - three juveniles and one adult - and during questioning the suspects kept looking back at a location near the hotel. One officer checked the area and found a discarded pistol that was modified to serve as a fully automatic weapon.
Police say a second weapon was found not far from the first, this one modified with a foregrip, a device to improve handling and counter the effects of recoil when a gun is fired. A third handgun was found on one of the suspects. All three guns had extended magazines that hold 30 or more bullets, and none had serial numbers, which police say makes them ghost guns.
A ghost gun is most often made from parts purchased online, and due to the absence of a manufacturer's serial number are untraceable by law enforcement. Police in Brooklyn Park recently tied the November fatal shooting of 17-year-old Syoka Siko to a weapon that was purchased in parts and assembled into an "unserialized" ghost gun.
Police documents say Siko was found with gunshot wounds inside a vehicle on Interstate 94 on the night of Nov. 18. The initial investigation showed Siko and one other person had been shot inside a vehicle at an apartment complex on the 8400 block of Regent Avenue North in Brooklyn Park before driving to I-94 and 53rd Avenue where they were eventually located.
Siko later died at the hospital. Two teens were arrested in connection with the fatal shooting.
"The gun violence has to stop in Brooklyn Park, in this region and certainly across the nation," Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said at the time. Bruley. "For those in powerful positions, especially legislators, take notice when we have children who can buy guns off the internet and assemble them. Action has to be taken."
"I remind you that these are 17-year-old children," Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said at the time, "who were not only able to order the gun parts, but quickly able to assemble them in their bedroom to create working firearms."
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