Teen charged after police said he tried to pull two guns on officers during arrest
By DEANNA WENIGER | Pioneer Press
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A 17-year-old was charged Wednesday after police say he attempted to pull two different guns on St. Paul officers during an arrest the night before.
The police department posted photos of the arrest online with a plea to residents to help them keep illegal guns off the street and out of the hands of juveniles.
“If you know who’s illegally carrying the guns in our city, call us,” the department said in the post.
Tyre Keys was charged in Ramsey County District Court with two counts of illegally possessing a firearm and one count of resisting arrest.
About 5:45 p.m. in the 600 block of Case Avenue in the city’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood, St. Paul police officers responded to a report of two vehicles chasing each other through the streets.
Police found four males wearing ski masks standing near a silver vehicle with no license plates. Three of the males ran off, but the fourth, Keys, remained, according to the complaint.
Keys had a gun, a Ruger, tucked in his waistband, according to the complaint. As police approached, his hand went for the gun. Officers wrested it away from him, and then Keys pulled a second gun, a silver revolver, from his pocket.
Officers were able to grab that gun as well and took him into custody.
Keys is ineligible to possess a firearm, having been involved in multiple crimes of violence. Since April 2020, he has been arrested seven times in St. Paul — three times for gun crimes, once for aggravated assault, once for burglary, once for an occupied burglary and once for a robbery. He also had five felony warrants, including one for possession of an assault rifle, the police department said.
“We all got lucky last night on the 600 block of Case Avenue,” the department said in the post. “Nobody got shot, nobody got hurt.”
This year, 164 people have been struck by gunfire and officers have recovered more than 480 illegally possessed guns in St. Paul.
