MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota man is facing charges after harassing customers outside a popular Minneapolis gay bar, and after yelling gay slurs, allegedly pulled out a CO2 powered BB gun and shot at a same-sex couple.
Tyler Erickson, a security guard at the Saloon bar says 43-year-old Wayne Steven Odegard started by harassing customers by making disparaging remarks about the gay community, and toward a couple that was holding hands, reports KMSB-TV.
Shortly after his expletives, Odegard allegedly pulled out a CO2 powered BB gun and fired shots at the bar’s patrons.
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The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.“I ran after him and then it ended up he shot a different gay couple in the leg, with that gun and it went through his jeans and drew blood,” Erickson says of the Sept. 25 incident.
Before Odegard was able to flee, Erickson nabbed him, arrested him and called police.
“He told me multiple times that I’m going to go to hell and he’s going to bring me with him,” Erickson says. “He recited a biblical passage — I think it’s a Deuteronomy passage.”
The two men who were shot at, Erickson notes, were visiting from Brooklyn and Philadelphia, “and they both joked that they came to progressive Minneapolis and got shot for being gay.”
The couple was not seriously injured and Odegard faces face a second-degree assault and gun possession charges.
KMSB-TV reports:
