Police in St. Paul, Minnesota, stumbled onto the stolen bronze statue of Olympic gold medalist Suni Lee while executing a search warrant at a home where rifle casings littered the ground, and the discovery has revived questions about crime and accountability in the city.
Officers responded to a shots fired call shortly after 12:30 a.m. on a Friday morning at a multi-unit home on the 900 block of Forest Street in St. Paul. They found spent rifle casings outside the residence, made announcements, and watched as multiple people filed out of the building. After obtaining a search warrant, police entered the home and recovered multiple firearms, ammunition, and the bronze likeness of Suni Lee, the St. Paul native who won Olympic gold, FOX 9 reported.
One man was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen property and booked into Ramsey County Jail. No one was injured in the shooting incident, and as of the time of the report, no arrests had been made in connection with the gunfire itself.
A tribute stolen the day after Suni Lee Day
The statue had been installed at Phalen Regional Park in July 2023 to honor Lee's achievements across multiple Olympic Games. The city of St. Paul had proclaimed July 30 as Suni Lee Day. One day later, July 31, 2025, the statue was reported stolen from the park.
St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry did not hold back about the theft. He called it an act of desecration against a community tribute:
"Our city honored a great American, Minnesotan, and Saint Paulite, with a statue to celebrate her incredible achievements in multiple Olympic Games. Last year, disrespectful and shameless thieves decided to desecrate this tribute by stealing the statue from our community."
Henry credited his officers' work on the ground for turning a routine shots fired response into a major recovery.
"I am happy to report that the statue of Suni Lee has been recovered thanks to our officers' diligent response to what began as a shots fired call."
St. Paul Parks and Recreation Director Andy Rodriguez also addressed the theft publicly, speaking on a program called "All Day," though the specifics of his remarks were not detailed in the FOX 9 report.
Firearms, ammunition, and a bronze statue inside one home
The scene police encountered on Forest Street tells its own story. Spent rifle casings on the ground outside. Multiple people inside a multi-unit residence. Firearms and ammunition stashed within. And tucked among it all, a stolen public monument honoring an Olympic champion.
The combination of gunfire, illegal firearms possession, and stolen property concentrated in a single location is the kind of discovery that raises hard questions about what was going on inside that home, and for how long. Police have not publicly identified the arrested man or indicated whether additional charges are forthcoming. They also have not said whether the people who exited the residence face any legal consequences connected to the shooting.
The incident fits a pattern familiar to communities across the country where police executing warrants or responding to calls uncover weapons caches alongside other criminal activity. Officers go in looking for one thing and find a house full of problems.
No motive has been offered for the original theft of the statue. No motive has been offered for the shots fired incident. Whether the two are connected beyond the address remains an open question that St. Paul police have not answered publicly.
Reinstallation plans are underway, but details remain thin
St. Paul police said plans to reinstall the statue are in the works, though they offered no specific timeline or location details. The condition of the recovered bronze has not been publicly described.
The statue had stood at Phalen Regional Park for roughly two years before it was stolen. Lee, a St. Paul native, earned her Olympic gold and became one of the most decorated gymnasts in American history. The city built the tribute to reflect that pride. Thieves took it anyway.
That the statue turned up inside a home already drawing police attention for gunfire underscores a blunt reality about property crime in American cities. Stolen goods do not exist in isolation. They circulate through networks where other laws are being broken, too. When law enforcement responds to violent incidents, they often find layers of criminal activity stacked on top of each other.
The arrest, on suspicion of receiving stolen property rather than theft, suggests the man in custody may not be the person who ripped the statue from its base at Phalen Regional Park. That distinction matters legally, but it also means the original thieves could still be at large.
For the residents of St. Paul who watched their city honor one of its own with a public monument, the theft was an insult. The fact that it took a shots fired call, not a dedicated investigation into the statue's disappearance, to locate the bronze is worth noting. Sometimes what officers actually find on the scene tells a bigger story than the call that brought them there.
Chief Henry framed the recovery as a win, and it is one. But a city that cannot keep a statue honoring an Olympic champion safe for two full years has a problem that one lucky search warrant does not fix.
Good policing recovered the statue. The question St. Paul should be asking is why it took this long, and what kind of environment lets a bronze monument disappear into a house full of guns and spent shell casings in the first place.
