A weekend shooting on a Fridley highway apparently stemmed from a fender bender and followed an aggressive confrontation, according to newly filed court documents.
Prosecutors on Wednesday charged 38-year-old Cordaryle Frank-Allen Frost with first-degree assault and drive-by shooting for the Saturday night gunfire along University Avenue by Interstate 694.
The shooting critically hurt a woman who was traveling with her 5-year-old daughter after attending a prom send-off party at a friend’s house.
Charging documents state that the bullet hit her in the neck, which prompted her to lose control of her SUV, which left the road and ended up in the grassy area near I-694 just after 9 p.m. Police noted the woman’s 5-year-old daughter was running around asking for help after the SUV came to a stop.
The woman suffered a spinal cord injury and impaired motor function from the shooting, the criminal complaint notes, but it’s still unclear how severe her permanent injuries will be. Doctors were able to remove bullet fragments from her neck during surgery.
What led up to the shooting
Surveillance video from the area of the prom send-off party in Columbia Heights showed that when the victim and her daughter were leaving, her SUV appeared to make contact with a Blazer parked behind her, court documents state.
Seconds later, Frost and his wife got into the Blazer and sped away.
About a block away from the party, the victim said the Frosts tried “something similar to a PIT maneuver” on her SUV until she pulled over. They then got out of the Blazer and started aggressively yelling at her and threatening to “beat her (expletive),” the victim told police.
The woman added that she drove away quickly to get away from the Frosts, but they caught back up to her SUV and she suddenly heard the gunshot and lost control of her body.
The Frosts were arrested on Monday.
While Cordaryle acknowledged the confrontation, he denied any involvement in a shooting. His wife, however, talked extensively with police, according to the charging documents and implicated her husband by saying she heard the gunshot when she was fastening her seat belt and realized he’d shot at the SUV.
Cordaryle has prior convictions for being unlawfully in possession of a gun. His wife hasn’t been charged at this time and was released from custody on Wednesday morning.
Courtesy of KSTP
