Killing of Fong Lee
On July 22, 2006, Minneapolis police officer Jason Andersen shot Fong Lee, a 19-year-old Hmong American, eight times during a chase near Cityview School in north Minneapolis. Lee died at the scene. Andersen said he believed Lee might have had a gun and was turning toward him, so he fired after a brief pursuit on foot. The first shot missed; Lee was struck multiple times as he ran, including four hits in the back, before he collapsed. A handgun was found beside Lee’s body, but his family said he was unarmed and questioned whether the gun had been planted. Later police documents suggested the gun had been held by police since 2004, a claim police denied.
The shooting prompted investigations. A grand jury in 2007 did not indict Andersen. In federal court, a 2009 jury ruled that Andersen’s use of force was lawful; the 8th Circuit upheld the verdict in 2010, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in December 2010.
Andersen received the Medal of Valor in 2008. He was placed on leave after domestic-violence allegations in 2009 and was fired later that year after an internal investigation. In 2010 he was acquitted of a federal civil rights charge for allegedly kicking a Black teenager during another arrest. By 2020, he was working as a chaplain coordinator for the Minneapolis Police Department.
The case heightened tensions between the Hmong community and the police. Protests occurred, including a July 2006 protest at City Hall with about 150 people, calls for independent investigations in 2009 and 2010, and renewed attention during the George Floyd protests in 2020. In 2021, demonstrators placed a memorial for Lee at George Floyd Square.
Fong Lee was born in 1987 in a refugee camp in Thailand and moved to the United States as a child, joining Minneapolis’s Hmong community.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:23 (CET).