John Jefferson
A stolen vehicle is driven through a playground at a school in Minneapolis, Minn. (Minneapolis Police Department).
The person behind the wheel of a stolen car seen cruising past a Minnesota playground full of kids has been taken into custody — and police say the driver is a 10-year-old boy.
Minneapolis police announced the arrest of the child, whose name has not been released, on Friday.
“The boy was booked into the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center on Thursday for probable cause 2nd degree assault,” police said in a statement.
The incident happened on Sept. 20 at Nellie Stone Johnson School in north Minneapolis.
Police say that no one was injured in the incident and that “no children on the playground were struck by the driver.”
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The alleged car thief is apparently well-known to police.
“Police records indicate that the 10-year-old boy has at least 30 entries dating back to May 2023,” the statement said. “He has been arrested at least twice before for auto theft related crimes.”
He is also listed as a suspect in “in more than 12 cases that range from auto theft to robbery to assault with a dangerous weapon,” as well as “runaway type cases,” the statement says.
Surveillance video shared by Minneapolis police shows the car driving on the grass and sidewalk surrounding the playground, passing the collection of slides, benches, and climbing setups — on which several children are seen playing — three times. School staff members are also seen trying to move children out of harm’s way, and a young girl appears to stop herself just moments before she would have ended up in the car’s path.
Police chief Brian O’Hara said that the boy’s family “is cooperative with police and have asked for help to keep their son or anyone else from being injured or killed.”
“It is unfathomable that a 10-year-old boy has been involved in this level of criminal activity without effective intervention,” O’Hara said in the statement. “Prison is not an acceptable option for a 10-year-old boy. But the adults who can stop this behavior going forward must act now to help this child and his family.”
Citing the incident as “only one example of the revolving door” of “arresting and re-arresting the same juveniles for auto-theft and other violent crimes,” O’Hara said that the matter “is a complex issue” that requires participation from “every entity involved in intervention” in order to solve the problem.
Watch the video from Minneapolis police, below.
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