Woman Tried to Shoot MN Trooper in the Head, Court Documents Say

A driver who was wounded in an officer-involved shooting Monday on Interstate 94 tried to shoot a Minnesota State Patrol trooper in the head before being shot herself in the arm, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Clay County District Court documents filed in the case of a male passenger.

Trooper Mark Peterson stopped Monday morning to help the woman, identified as Melody Victoria Gray, 30, and her male passenger, Domonique Maurice Crayton, 29, both of Milwaukee, who were in a car that had slid into the median a few miles east of Moorhead, the BCA said.

While Peterson worked to verify the apparently false information given by the car’s occupants, he learned the car had been reported stolen in Germantown, Wis., so he positioned his squad car to prevent the disabled car from driving away. Peterson then asked Crayton to get out of the car, the BCA said.

As Peterson tried to handcuff Crayton, Gray got out of the driver’s seat and, with her right arm extended, pointed a 9mm handgun at the trooper’s head and appeared to pull the trigger, court documents said. The gun, however, did not fire, reports the Pioneer Press .

Meanwhile, the woman tried to manipulate the handgun to chamber a round and raised the gun again toward the trooper. The trooper then fired his weapon and hit her in the right arm, court documents said.

The woman then dropped the gun and ran across I-94 and north into a field, court documents and the BCA said. She reportedly dropped a gun that Peterson then recovered.

Gray was taken into custody and transported to the hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound, the bureau said.

Peterson was not injured, the BCA said.

Both Gray and Crayton had warrants out for their arrest on multiple charges.

Crayton appeared in court Wednesday and kept insisting his name was Donald Moor El. “I’m of a sovereign nation,” Crayton declared, saying he was of a Moorish Nation of Islam. “How can I conduct business with you?”