A view of the downtown Minneapolis skyline in 2018.

Multiple people were injured in two separate shootings in South Minneapolis that occurred within a 12-hour period on Sept. 15, according to police.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a Sept. 16 news conference that four people were left with life-threatening injuries from the incidents that occurred just over two miles from each other.

The first shooting occurred around 11 a.m. local time, and the second happened just after 10 p.m. local time, according to Minneapolis CBS station WCCO.

O'Hara said that police "cannot entirely rule out" a connection between the two shootings. Investigators believe that the first shooting was a "quarrel that escalated to gunfire" and that the second shooting was "related to a narcotics dispute," according to O'Hara.

Both shootings occurred in areas where homeless people are known to congregate, according to officials.

The transit walkway where the earlier shooting occurred is not considered a homeless encampment but has "dozens and dozens" of homeless people there daily, O'Hara said at a Sept. 15 press conference. The latter shooting occurred at an encampment in a vacant parking lot the city has previously attempted to close, according to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

Frey announced at the Sept. 16 news conference that police had secured the encampment site as a crime scene and that the city is seeking a court order to close it. He added that he has received more law enforcement resources for South Minneapolis from the state.

"This level of violence in South Minneapolis is unacceptable," Frey said. "The community, the neighborhoods of South Minneapolis deserve a whole lot better."

One shooting location at center of legal battle

Hamoudi Sabri, the owner of the parking lot where the encampment stood, told Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP in a statement that the shootings required "a citywide emergency response" instead of clearing encampments.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Sabri opened the parking lot of a vacant commercial building he owns for the encampment because he was "tired of seeing unsheltered people breaking into his properties for shelter."

“Bulldoze people’s tents, fence off their space, and call it leadership,” Sabri said in the statement to KSTP. “But it isn’t leadership. It’s an illusion of control designed to make the problem less visible, not less deadly.”

USA TODAY reached out to a publicly listed phone number for Sabri's real estate company and did not receive an immediate response.

The Minneapolis City Council approved the filing of a civil lawsuit against Sabri over the encampment on Sept. 8 and has issued $20,000 in health citations, according to the Sahan Journal.

“If the landlord wants to sue us, we will see him in court," Frey said at the press conference. "We will say 100 times over, encampments are not safe."

Shootings in areas for the unhoused follow the Annunciation Church shooting

The shootings come just weeks after another shooting in Minneapolis at the Annunciation Church, which also has a school, left two children dead and more than a dozen others injured.

The shooter fired dozens of rounds through stained-glass windows toward children sitting in pews during a service to celebrate the return to the school year.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2 shootings in 1 day in Minneapolis leave multiple injured: What we know

Reporting by James Powel, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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