2 October 2024
ST. PAUL — During a discussion of gun control at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Walz revealed his son had been close to a shooting in St. Paul in 2023.
“I think all the parents watching tonight, this is your biggest nightmare,” he said. “I got a 17-year-old, and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball. Those things don’t leave you.”
Walz’s son, Gus, who at the time was 16 and attending St. Paul Central High School, was at the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center at Oxford Community Center across the street from the school when a city employee shot a 16-year-old boy in the head in January 2023. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s presidential campaign confirmed the location of the shooting Walz described in the debate to multiple national news outlets late Tuesday night.
The teen survived the shooting, though has lasting brain injuries, according to a lawsuit filed by his family against the city. The parks employee who shot the teen, Exavir Dwayne Binford Jr., then 26, was initially charged with attempted murder and later pleaded guilty to first-degree assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison earlier this year.
Shortly after Gus Walz made national headlines for his emotional response to his father’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, a longtime St. Paul youth athletics coach who was with the governor’s son at the rec center during the shooting shared what happened in a social media post.
“He helped keeping everyone safe and calm, looking after the kids in the gym with us as I rushed out,” said David Albornoz, who was among three people to receive an award from St. Paul’s fire department for rendering lifesaving aid to the teen shot in the parking lot.
Albornoz said he had coached the Jimmy Lee girls volleyball team with Gus Walz after Walz had approached him about coaching the Central High boys’ volleyball team. The governor’s son also helped run open gym sessions to teach younger kids about the sport, Albornoz said.
‘Too many of us have this’
In a policy-centered debate between the Democratic and Republican presidential running mates marked by civility, Vance extended sympathies to Walz for what his son experienced.
“Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed the shooting. And I’m sorry about that and hope he’s doing OK,” he said, to thanks from Walz. “Christ, have mercy. It is awful,” Vance continued.
Walz also referenced the shooting during a Sept. 12 campaign speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he used it to criticize Vance, who had described school shootings as a “fact of life” in America when he called for more security at schools, the Associated Press reported.
“Think about that. Now, families forever broken. Too many of us have been there,” Walz told a crowd of supporters last month. “My own son was in a location where someone was shot in the head. Too many of us have this.”
Walz has shared the story with the media in the past, though this is the first time it has received widespread attention. Minnesota Public Radio said the governor shared with a reporter this spring that his son was at the community center when the shooting happened.
The shooting
Court documents say Binford shot then 16-year-old JuVaughn Turner in the head after an altercation between Binford, Turner and two other teenagers outside the community center, which is on the east side of Lexington Parkway across the street from Central High School.
Binford was trying to prevent people from entering the community center after the building was placed on lockdown following a report of trouble at Central High School earlier in the day. He reportedly got into an argument with a girl who had let her brother into the building, according to court documents.
When Binford ran into her later as he left work, two boys attempted to intervene and they got into a fight. But when the fight had ended, Binford took out his pistol and shot Turner, according to court documents.
Binford had initially pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and argued he had shot Turner in self-defense. He later agreed to plead guilty to a charge of second-degree assault in exchange for prosecutors dropping the more serious charge.
Turner’s family has filed a lawsuit against the City of St. Paul for failing to fire Binford for what they called a pattern of violence and threats against minors while he worked for the Parks and Recreation Department.
Walz record on guns
Minnesota’s governor once touted his “A” rating from the National Rifle Association for his support for gun rights when he was a Democratic congressman for a conservative-leaning district in the south of the state.
Since he ran for governor in 2018, Walz has shredded that credential by calling for stricter gun control measures, including a ban on “assault weapons,” a term that generally applies to semiautomatic firearms like the AR-15, which are modeled after military rifles.
As governor, Walz has been able to sign gun control legislation into law with the help of Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities in the state House and Senate. They say the new laws will protect the public by keeping guns out of the wrong hands.
In 2023, they enacted universal background checks for gun sales and created the option for courts to issue extreme risk protection orders, also known as a “red flag” law, which allows courts to order confiscation of weapons from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.
And this year, Walz also signed a bill stiffening penalties for “straw purchases,” where an eligible person buys a firearm on an ineligible person’s behalf. The bill came after the killing of two police officers and a firefighter in Burnsville by a man who got a weapon through his girlfriend, a federal indictment alleged.
Asked by CBS News debate moderator Norah O’Donnell why he changed his stance on guns, Walz said he met with parents of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in Connecticut, which took the lives of 26, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7.
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