The Warning Signs Were Everywhere. Why Didn’t the System Stop Carlton Johnson?

Police, prosecutors, courts and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office each encountered pieces of Johnson’s history before he killed two people and injured six others. The public record does not show that any agency assembled the full pattern.

Four hours before Carlton Johnson II opened fire at Shoreline Plaza on September 2, 2026, an apartment employee reported that he had threatened to shoot a resident and other people connected to the building.

The employee spoke by telephone with a Minneapolis police officer at 12:41 p.m. and reported that Johnson had emailed the threat the night before. Police created a report and coded it as Terroristic Threats.

At 4:36 p.m., the first 911 calls reported gunfire at the building. Johnson began shooting during a child-custody exchange, wounded the mother of one of his children, shot two employees and entered the building. On the ninth floor, he killed residents Dale Henry Spry, 63, and Muse Abdi Afrah, 61. He then shot two police officers before police killed him. A third officer was injured by shattered glass.

The noon report was still moving through the department’s approval process when the shooting began, according to reporting by the Minnesota Star Tribune. An MPD spokesman said the employee had reported feeling safe at the time, which helps explain why the call was handled by telephone rather than as an immediate emergency. It does not answer what happened after the report was taken.

The September 2 threat was the final entry in a much longer public record. By then, Johnson had accumulated a history of alleged threats, domestic conflict, police contacts and court proceedings. Different parts of government encountered different pieces of it.

A history recorded in separate files

The earliest conviction identified in court records reviewed by the Star Tribune dates to 2012, when Johnson pleaded guilty to violating a contact order in a domestic-abuse case. He received probation and a $50 fine. The case temporarily restricted his ability to possess a firearm, but that restriction expired years ago.

In 2018, Johnson’s sister accused him of assaulting her after she told him to leave her apartment. She said he indicated that he had a gun and was “not afraid to shoot people in the face.” Prosecutors charged him with domestic assault and property damage. The assault charge was dismissed after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor property damage. He received a 90-day jail sentence, with 86 days stayed. These were allegations and negotiated case outcomes, not findings that Johnson had committed every act described.

In 2023, a woman sought a harassment restraining order after alleging that Johnson had sexually assaulted her, impersonated a police detective and sent more than 120 messages that included explicit death threats. A judicial officer granted the order. It reportedly expired in 2025. The order did not prohibit Johnson from possessing a firearm.

None of these events, by itself, automatically barred Johnson from receiving a new permit to carry. But Minnesota law gives sheriffs authority beyond checking a list of automatic disqualifications. A sheriff may deny an application when there is a substantial likelihood that the applicant would present a danger to himself or the public if permitted to carry a pistol.

The permit review

The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office reportedly issued Johnson a permit on April 9, 2026. A person familiar with the application told the Star Tribune that it had been flagged for additional review before the office concluded that issuing the permit was lawful. HCSO has not publicly confirmed what triggered that review or which records it examined.

Johnson apparently had no conviction or active qualifying order that automatically disqualified him. A discretionary danger denial also carries a demanding burden. If Johnson had appealed, the sheriff would have needed to prove the danger finding by clear and convincing evidence. Minnesota law says uninvestigated and undocumented allegations of criminal misconduct may not be considered.

Still, discretionary denials are not merely theoretical. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said his office would have denied Johnson based on the threats documented in the 2023 case. That is a retrospective opinion, not proof that HCSO violated the law. It does show that Minnesota sheriffs can apply the same statutory authority differently.

The official numbers show how unusual such decisions are in Hennepin County. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension recorded 9,184 permit applications and 109 total denials in Hennepin County during 2025. The Star Tribune reported that only five involved the discretionary danger standard. Ramsey County had 4,166 applications and 106 total denials, including 68 based on danger. The reason counts do not necessarily represent unique applicants, but the difference in practice is substantial.

Warnings at Shoreline Plaza

While Johnson’s permit application moved through HCSO, his relationship with residents and staff at Shoreline Plaza was deteriorating. The building’s owner later alleged six lease violations between January and June. The allegations included an assault on a resident, repeated displays of a handgun and statements that Johnson would kill someone. Johnson denied assaulting or threatening anyone and argued that state law protected his right to carry a permitted firearm in his residence.

The owner served an eviction notice on June 16 and began a court proceeding. The case had not produced an eviction order when Johnson attacked the building. A trial was scheduled for September 11. The landlord had assembled the allegations and taken legal action, but the civil process had not removed Johnson from the property.

On June 25, a resident called 911 and initially said Johnson had threatened him and pointed a gun. Police followed up several days later. According to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, the caller then said Johnson had exposed the gun by moving his jacket but had not removed it from his waistband. The caller’s credibility was further complicated because the Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office had charged him with misdemeanor assault after an earlier confrontation with Johnson.

Moriarty said those inconsistencies and credibility problems made the criminal case difficult to prove. They were also only part of what government records contained by then. In June, the same resident sought a harassment restraining order, alleging that Johnson had physically assaulted and threatened him with a handgun. The petition remained pending when Johnson died. The eviction case separately described other alleged assaults, threats and gun displays.

The 56-day delay

MPD did not submit the June 25 case to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office until August 20, 56 days after the incident. The public record does not explain what investigative work occurred during that period, why the referral took that long or whether anyone at MPD considered seeking an Extreme Risk Protection Order.

Minnesota’s ERPO law allows a court to temporarily prohibit a person from possessing or purchasing firearms when clear and convincing evidence shows that the person poses a significant firearm danger to others or a significant suicide risk. The statute directs judges to consider a history of threats or violence, threatened use of force, certain arrests and court-order violations, and the unlawful or reckless use or display of a firearm. Police chiefs, sheriffs, city and county attorneys, and qualifying family or household members may petition.

When HCAO received the June case, an experienced prosecutor reviewed it that day. Moriarty later told MPR News that the prosecutor concluded it was appropriate to decline criminal charges because the gun had remained in Johnson’s waistband, the caller had changed his description and the caller had himself been charged in an earlier altercation with Johnson.

HCAO also flagged Johnson for an ERPO review but decided it had insufficient evidence to petition. According to Moriarty, the office knew only about the two-month-old June incident. It did not know the broader history that appeared in other police and court records.

“We did not, and it certainly could have made a difference,” Moriarty said when asked whether her office knew about Johnson’s prior charges, reports and domestic-violence allegations.

Moriarty said the wider pattern suggested that “maybe it would have been appropriate for police or someone” to seek an ERPO. She also explained that HCAO generally cannot see MPD calls unless police submit a case or consult prosecutors. Her office employs ERPO specialists whom police can contact for help, but she did not know whether MPD had done so.

What the record shows

There are reasonable explanations for several individual decisions. The June criminal case had serious proof problems. Johnson’s 2023 restraining order had expired. His prior firearm restriction had ended. A permit denial based on dangerousness would have required HCSO to defend its evidence in court. The September 2 caller said employees felt safe at that moment.

Even taken together, those explanations do not resolve the systems question. By late August, records held by public institutions included prior domestic-abuse-related history, a firearm-related threat alleged in 2018, the 2023 restraining order, a flagged permit application, an eviction proceeding describing current threats and gun displays, a June police investigation and a second pending restraining-order petition. HCAO says its preventive-firearm review saw only one incident. HCSO has not said what its flagged review saw. MPD has not publicly explained whether its separate contacts were connected.

Courts are not threat-monitoring agencies, and a court file does not automatically create a duty for a judge to investigate unrelated records. Property managers do not control criminal charges, gun permits or ERPO petitions. The principal accountability questions therefore concern the agencies that possessed preventive authority and the systems determining what information reached them.

The available evidence does not prove that an ERPO, permit denial, arrest or faster eviction would have prevented the shooting. Johnson alone is responsible for the people he killed and injured. Government cannot reliably identify every person who will become violent.

Government can, however, examine whether its systems recognize escalation. The Johnson record suggests that agencies evaluated incidents one at a time, according to the information placed directly in front of them. That method can produce defensible decisions and still miss the danger created by the accumulated pattern.

What the agencies have not explained

Important facts remain unknown. The public does not know why MPD did not submit the June case for 56 days, whether police considered an ERPO, what HCSO reviewed before issuing the permit, what records HCAO’s ERPO screening required or what happened inside MPD between the noon threat report and the 4:36 p.m. shooting.

Until MPD and HCSO explain what their reviews included, the public cannot determine whether the system’s failure was one of judgment, information-sharing or both.