“This community is extremely safe,” Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski shares report of early Sunday mornings’ shootings

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — An ongoing feud between two groups led to two separate shootings nearly an hour apart from one another in the early morning hours Sunday.

“But our folks were actually out there when this happened at 1:56 a.m. They were right in the block, and they heard the shots. They were the first there to provide immediate lifesaving care to all three victims, unfortunately, Mr. Holmes did not survive. Another officer observed a man with a gun near the body and engaged bravely in a foot pursuit of this individual,” said Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski.

An officer chased the man who jumped into a vehicle and headed to Island Park. The driver of the car was arrested, and the man jumped from the vehicle and continued to run from officers until he was arrested. Zibolski says surrounding law enforcement agencies were called in to help when things started to get out of control.

“The bar closing crowd became unruly and was pressing our crime scene, and our officers were having a difficult time controlling that scene. A request for mutual aid was made,” said Zibolski.

About thirty minutes later a second report of shots fired in the 4700 block of 16th Avenue South. West Fargo Police responded to the scene, where they found 20-year-old Elijah Hughes dead at the scene.

Zibolski waited 36 hours before holding a news conference to discuss the shootings. The chief got defensive when reporters pressed him about the delay…

“I was off, however, there was no information to provide until we were able to identify the suspect later in the day. And then we immediately pushed that out to our community, so other than the initial statements in terms of what we were doing, there was no other information to provide to the community. Today we have some subservient things to tell them, hopefully we’ll have more to tell them, but keep in mind this is not a TV show, this is real life with real people,” said Zibolski.

Zibolski was also asked about whether he considers downtown to be safe.

“For seven to eight months, we’ve had no person shot and we’ve had no persons murdered. That’s extremely safe, but we had a catastrophic event yesterday. And so you can’t apply one catastrophic day to an overall safety of a community. This community is extremely safe, for a city this size? Extremely safe,” said Zibolski.

A city spokesman said Mayor Tim Mahoney declined to answer our questions about the incident and would only discuss the city budget.