Mountain Iron man charged in Gilbert shooting that struck home 11 times

A Gilbert home in the 100 block of Iowa Avenue was struck by gunfire 11 times in the pre-dawn darkness, turning a quiet Iron Range street into the scene of a serious violence investigation.

Noah Allen Larson, 23, of Mountain Iron, was charged April 29 with two counts of second-degree attempted murder and a drive-by-shooting-related offense after investigators linked him to the shooting. Police received a report of shots fired around 4:30 a.m. Saturday, and investigators later found evidence that 11 rounds hit the residence.

The charge combination signals that authorities believe the shooting was aimed at a person inside the home, not just fired randomly into the neighborhood. It also means the danger reached beyond the intended target, since anyone inside the house or nearby could have been struck by a stray bullet. No final motive has been made public, but the case is being treated as an intentional violent felony rather than a property crime or accidental discharge.

For Gilbert, a small St. Louis County city on Minnesota’s Iron Range, the shooting carried an immediate public-safety shock. A residence being hit repeatedly before dawn is the kind of incident that can unsettle an entire block, especially in a community where violent crime of this type is unusual and neighbors are likely to recognize one another.

The case now moves into court, where investigators will need to show what happened before the shots were fired, why the home was targeted, and what evidence supports the attempted-murder allegations. The speed of the charging suggests law enforcement moved quickly to identify a suspect and pursue felony counts in the days after the shooting, but the broader question for residents remains whether the gunfire was tied to a one-time dispute or exposed a deeper threat to neighborhood safety.