Maplewood To Host Emergency Meeting After Shootings Outside Stargate

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. (WCCO) -- The Maplewood City Council's emergency meeting this week will decide the fate of Stargate Nightclub.

The meeting, which will take place Wednesday morning, was called to address violence at the club after 60 gunshots were fired over the weekend. Five people were hit by that gunfire, all are expected to survive.

The Maplewood Police Department is compiling a list of options for the owner of Stargate Nightclub. Police and city officials say it has been a troubled property for quite some time.

"We've had it we've had enough of the shootings in the parking lot," said Mayor Nora Slawik.

Slawik says something has to be done to stop the gun violence that has plagued the corner of Larpenteur and Rice for quite some time. Police say the first shot came from inside the Stargate Nightclub early Saturday morning, forcing the hundreds inside to run outside to the parking lot.

About 60 shots were then fired in the parking lot from multiple guns. The running crowd made its way to the other side of Larpenter, which is the city of St. Paul.

"Once over there, more shots were fired and a car crash happened at the intersection of Rice and Larpenteur so there was a lot that happened in a very short time," said Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell.

Schnell says city leaders met with Stargate's owner a week ago today.

"To address concerns we had about incidents that had occurred the prior two weekends. There had been assaults that had occurred, both stemmed from inside that ended up outside," Schnell said.

Mayor Slawik says city leaders in Maplewood, Roseville and St. Paul have been working together to improve the area. Now they must speed up efforts to deal with this uptick in violence.

"It was supposed to be the end of the month, but we decided to take action. The neighbors around there are upset, St. Paul and Roseville are upset, Maplewood, our council is very unhappy," Slawik said. "So we're going to bring the owner in and were going to talk to him about what the options are."

The meeting with Stargate's owner will now take place at 8 a.m. Wednesday in council chambers. We're told the options could range from adding more security to the stripping of the club's license.

Investigators are still looking into the shooting.

We're told they hope to speak with a couple of people who have key information or may have been involved. Police want to know who did this and why they thought it was OK to blatantly open fire when there were so many people around.