MINNEAPOLIS — New charges have been filed against a man accused of murder following a multi-county shooting spree that began in Minneapolis.
Hennepin County prosecutors have charged 25-year-old Ameer Musa Matariyeh with three counts of second-degree assault and one count of domestic assault in connection with an incident that started at an Uptown apartment building on October 22. Minneapolis police were dispatched to the 2900 block of Lyndale Ave. S. on reports that a man was shooting from the balcony of an apartment.
A criminal complaint says a woman on the scene told police that the shooter was Matariyeh, her former boyfriend with whom she had a two-year-old child. The woman told officers she lived in the apartment with a new boyfriend, and that Matariyeh had come there earlier in the day, pushed down her current boyfriend and put a gun to the back of her head.
The woman said at one point she and her boyfriend ran from the building, and after chasing them Matariyeh allegedly went back inside the apartment and fired shots at them from the balcony. The defendant eventually escaped.
Crisis negotiators eventually were able to reach Natariyeh by phone and determined he was driving and no longer inside the apartment. During conversations with police negotiators, the defendant was extremely upset, allegedly telling them he would kill bystanders if he was not able to talk with his former girlfriend.
Law enforcement says the incident appears to have fueled what came next when Matariyeh drove from the Twin Cities into Kandiyohi County in western Minnesota. Authorities say he stopped at a rural farmstead in Lake Lillian and shot a man in the chest, then left that scene and then attempted to carjack a motorist outside Willmar, fatally shooting 55-year-old Jerome Skluzacek in the head.
Matariyeh is charged in Kandiyohi County with both second-degree murder and attempted murder.