The incident
On Wednesday April 22nd at 1230 pm, Edina police were called to a shooting outside a transitional affordable housing complex near 66th and York Ave. Police located the victim, John Stroud, 22, on the ground with a gunshot wound. Stroud died at the scene.
Police received information that a fight had led up to the shooting and that several suspects had fled on foot. The incident caused lockdowns of adjacent businesses, including Southdale Mall and M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital.
Police located and arrested three suspects that evening, and a fourth suspect on April 23rd. Investigation revealed the fourth suspect, El’voun Quinnell Wren, 22, had been in a physical confrontation with Stroud before shooting Stroud. Both Stroud and Wren were residents of the transitional housing complex.
On Friday April 23rd, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Wren with one count of 2nd degree murder, not intentional. That charge might be enhanced to 1st degree murder if the case is taken before a grand jury. The other three suspects were released without charges.
The transitional housing complex
66 West, the transitional affordable housing complex, has operated in Edina for the past 5 years. It reportedly serves people ages 18-24 who have experienced “housing insecurity.” According to Lou Raguse, Kare 11, the complex has been the scene of 147 police calls for service in the past three years.
The complex has 39 apartments and cost over $11 million to build. Funding came from a variety of public and private funding sources, including Hennepin County, the City of Edina, the Met Council, the Edina Rotary, and the Edina Community Lutheran Church.
The recent violence and the prolonged level of police calls to the complex is justification for city leaders to seriously question continued support for the complex.
Wren’s criminal history
A review of Wren’s criminal history reveals he should have been incapacitated, rendering him unable to re-offend and kill John Stroud last week. A credible criminal justice system would have ensured that. But our system is far from credible and as a result a 22-year-old is dead, his assailant, also 22, will now likely spend decades in prison, and a community around 66 West will be forever scarred.
In November 2020, Wren and three others went on an armed robbery spree robbing at least five convenience store/gas stations over three days in several Minneapolis suburbs. The group worked as a team with at least three of the suspects (including Wren) armed with handguns. In several of the robberies the suspects put guns to victim’s heads, pistol whipped some victims, and shot one victim leaving him paralyzed. The crew evaded police during the robbery spree while driving a stolen minivan with no license plates.
Wren and the other suspects were eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of armed robbery and 1st and 2nd degree assault. Each of those counts in theory should have resulted in several years of prison, and the use of a firearm alone should have resulted in a mandatory minimum sentence of three years alone.
During pre-trial examination, the Hennepin County court determined that Wren and his siblings had been subject to multiple child protection cases over the years involving domestic violence and parental substance use. Wren had also been playing with a gun in 2015 with another sibling when the gun went off killing a third sibling. Wren reportedly had attended no fewer than 15 schools because of behavioral and emotional “dysregulation” and records indicated that Wren had “evidenced behavioral problems” since elementary school including fighting, assaults, and threats of violence. Wren also reported that at least five of his friends had “died” in just the past year, presumably of violence. The doctor evaluating Wren opined that Wren was a “moderate risk to engage in future acts of violence.”
The sad truth is Wren’s upbringing ruined him and turned him into a danger to society. That’s tragic and something our society needs to address more effectively. But once a person is ruined and becomes violent, it becomes the responsibility of a credible criminal justice system to incapacitate him, not send him back into society to re-offend.
Despite Wren’s history, and the horrific violence Wren and his co-defendants carried out, the Hennepin County court chose to try Wren in juvenile court rather than certify him to stand trial as an adult. Wren was “adjudicated delinquent” as a juvenile and his adult sentence totaling 158 months in prison was “stayed.” Wren was instead sentenced to take part in the “Well Spring Second Chance Program” at the Red Wing Correctional Facility. He was subsequently released and then eventually discharged from all court oversight in January 2025.
Less then a year later, the Edina Police Department cited Wren for Disorderly Conduct – a criminal case that he had made a court appearance on in early April 2026, just weeks before shooting and killing Stroud.
Takeaway
An ineffective criminal justice system once again failed a young and impressionable defendant by demonstrating to him that there are no substantial consequences for violent crime.
It also failed society by not incapacitating the defendant and preventing him from re-offending. By failing that defendant, the system is responsible for the violence that the defendant predictably engaged in after release, and the decades of time the defendant must now serve for the new crime. But it doesn’t end there – now there is a new victim, a new victim’s family, and a community whose confidence in our criminal justice system has suffered yet another devastating blow.
Sadly, it was all predictable. And predictable is preventable.
