Terrance Franklin

Terrance Franklin, 22, was shot ten times, including five times in the head, by Minneapolis SWAT officers in the basement of a South Side home on May 10, 2013, after a roughly 90-minute police chase that began with a burglary report. Police said Franklin fought officers and a K9 in the darkened basement, wrestled a submachine gun from one officer, and shot and wounded two others before the remaining officers returned fire; Franklin's family has long maintained he had surrendered. No body camera footage existed, and the only witnesses to the shooting itself were the five officers involved. A grand jury declined to indict any officer in September 2013, and an internal police investigation cleared them as well. In 2021, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said newly analyzed video evidence warranted reopening the case, but the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension declined to reinvestigate, finding no new evidence requiring it. No one has ever been charged in Franklin's death.

Minneapolis, MN · Hennepin County

• 2013: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The burglary report, the chase, and the shooting, per the Minneapolis Police Department's own investigation, grand jury proceedings, and later reporting including a 2021 TIME magazine investigation and a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension letter declining reinvestigation.
• Officers responding to a report of a burglary suspect pursued Franklin's vehicle after he drove around an officer and struck a squad car door; during the roughly 90-minute chase that followed, a motorcyclist was separately struck and killed by a police squad car pursuing Franklin.
• Franklin fled on foot and hid in the basement of a house on Bryant Avenue South; five SWAT officers — Andrew Stender, Ricardo Muro, Mark Durand, Michael Meath, and Lucas Peterson — entered the basement and released a police dog on him.
• Police said Franklin gained control of a submachine gun during a struggle in the confined basement and shot and wounded two officers before the remaining officers returned fire, striking Franklin ten times, five of them to the head; the department's account described the entire fatal encounter as lasting only seconds.
• No body camera footage existed of the shooting itself; a bystander's cell phone video captured only the aftermath, beginning after officers said Franklin was already dead, and Franklin's family's investigators say officers can be heard on that recording using a racial slur.
• A Hennepin County grand jury declined to indict any officer in September 2013, and a separate internal Minneapolis Police Department investigation concluded the officers had acted appropriately; Police Chief Janee Harteau publicly stated she “fully support[ed]” the officers' actions.
• The City of Minneapolis reached a $795,000 settlement with Franklin's family in a federal wrongful death lawsuit in 2020, without admitting wrongdoing.
• In 2021, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said expert analysis of the bystander video not previously considered warranted a new review by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; the BCA responded that it found no new evidence requiring reinvestigation and returned the matter to the county attorney's office, where it has not been reopened.
• One of the five officers, Lucas Peterson, went on to serve as a field training officer for several Minneapolis officers, including Derek Chauvin, who was later convicted of murdering George Floyd.

• Whether Franklin gained control of an officer's weapon and fired on officers, as police maintained, or had already surrendered, as his family has long stated, was never independently established, since no body camera footage existed and the only witnesses to the shooting itself were the officers involved; the question was never tested at any criminal trial, since the grand jury declined to indict.
• The specific content of the expert video analysis that led Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to call for reopening the case in 2021 has not been made fully public, nor has the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's own reasoning for declining to act on it beyond its brief letter.
• The full extent of any racial language used by officers during the encounter, as alleged by the family's hired investigators based on the bystander video, has not been independently verified or addressed in any official public accounting.

• TIME — “Minneapolis Police Were Cleared in the 2013 Killing of Terrance Franklin. A Video Complicates the Story—and Now the Case May Be Reopened”
• MPR News — “No charges against Minneapolis police officers in Franklin case”
• CBS News Minnesota (WCCO) — “Terrance Franklin Killing: BCA Says It Won't Investigate Deadly 2013 Minneapolis Police Shooting”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs