The mother of one of the four children wounded while in a stolen car early Sunday in north Minneapolis said a bullet is lodged near her son's spine and he is paralyzed from the waist down. A girl struck in the back of her head while in the car is up and talking, but doctors are monitoring brain swelling.

The children, between the ages of 11 and 13, were shot by an unknown assailant while joyriding in a stolen car — a fact that has reignited debate over juvenile auto theft and how the city is attacking the problem. No arrests have been made in the case, a Minneapolis police spokesman confirmed Monday.

Da'Marious Ja'Michael Coleman, 13, underwent surgery Sunday to relieve pressure on his spine, and doctors remained hopeful that with physical therapy he can regain feeling in his legs, said his mother, Sarah Ward.

On Monday, Ward described her son as a cheerful homebody who loves playing video games.

"He must have been peer pressured into that car," she said.

A preliminary police investigation indicated five minors were riding near the intersection of W. Broadway and N. Girard Avenue around 1 a.m. when a dark-colored sedan began following and firing at them with a fully automatic weapon. Police recovered about 30 shell casings from the scene.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty made combating juvenile auto thefts a major platform of her office, and she said it has shown success. In the first year of the "Youth Auto Theft Early Intervention" program, her office reported a 48% drop in the number of youth auto theft cases. In that same time frame, auto theft reports to law enforcement dropped 30% overall.

Those tangible decreases year-over-year don't diminish how prevalent car thefts are compared to before the pandemic. Minneapolis has seen a 140% increase in car theft reports this year compared with 2019, according to police data.

Getting any kind of justice in those cases has also proven difficult. According to data shared by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office (HCAO) from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, in 2023 there were 9,784 motor vehicle thefts reported to law enforcement — yet only 3.7% of those were closed.

The HCAO said in a statement Monday that "police often tell us they know who is involved, but do not have the evidence to prove it," adding that this year the number of closed cases is down to 1.4%.

According to statistics from the HCAO, 81% of the participants in their auto-theft prevention initiative had no new criminal charges a year later. A spokesperson for the HCAO said none of the five children in the stolen car on Sunday morning had been referred to its program.

In a defiant news conference Monday evening, Police Chief Brian O'Hara disputed Moriarty's characterization of the situation, saying investigators referred two felony cases to her office on Aug. 9 after two of the children involved in Sunday's shooting were caught in a stolen car earlier this month. Those two are already part of Moriarty's Youth Group Violence Intervention program, he said.

But they were ultimately released to their parents and never booked into the juvenile detention center, the Star Tribune later learned, because the offense was not seen as serious enough.

"The kids weren't charged. They weren't diverted. Despite pleas from their parents begging for help, begging for them to be detained, they were let back out into the street into the same environment to commit more crimes — which they did over the weekend," O'Hara said. "We've had several of the parents involved with these kids in the shooting this weekend asking us to arrest their kids — begging us to detain them, because they can't control them and they're afraid they're going to get killed."

Moriarty's office could not be reached for further comment Monday night.

The children were caught in a stolen 2020 Kia Optima. The car is registered to a couple in St. James, Minn. Their 20-year-old daughter, Adly Velasquez, said she drove it Thursday from her home in Mankato to visit a friend in Minneapolis who lives near the University of Minnesota.

She recalled parking the car under a street light outside the Marco Apartments on SE. 8th Street and locking it. Velasquez's friend came out the next morning and saw the car was gone. Velasquez saw her vehicle in a television news report over the weekend. Its back windshield "was entirely shot out" and a taillight was broken in the hail of bullets, she said.

Now, she's waiting until police collect evidence from the car before she can claim it from the city impound lot. "It just sucks," she said. "All you can think about is, 'Why me?'" At the same time, she added, "And to think about those kids, that's a lot to process."

Juvenile car thefts skyrocketed nationally in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially of Kias and Hyundais after a social media trend taught an easy way to hot-wire those cars.

"This is a tremendous problem we have had in the two years I have been here," O'Hara said.

While O'Hara said there has been a noticeable decrease in auto thefts by juveniles, including a quarter drop this summer in theft of Kias and Hyundais, the crimes connected to the thefts has become "more brazen."

"More aggravated assaults, more robberies, more hit-and-runs, more serious crimes more frequently committed by those individuals involved in the theft of these vehicles," O'Hara said Sunday.

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The Highway Loss Data Institute reported this month that prevalence of theft of Kias and Hyundais was cut in half once the carmaker upgraded the vehicle software in February 2023 to make up for the lack of engine immobilizers, an anti-theft technology that has long been standard in other vehicles.

In 2023, 4,520 auto thefts involving a Kia or Hyundai were reported in Minneapolis, up from 2,340 in 2022 when the city said it tied stolen Kias and Hyundais to five homicides, 13 shootings, 36 robberies and 265 crashes.

There can often be tragic outcomes for those driving the cars, as well. From early 2020 to April 2022, at least eight youths died while joyriding in stolen cars in the Twin Cities. A teenage boy was shot and killed while driving in a stolen Kia in January of 2023 in north Minneapolis.

Moriarty's program is meant to reduce youth auto thefts by working with law enforcement, truancy teams and county Child Protective Services with the aim of either stopping a child who has been charged with stealing a car from doing it again or intervening before they are charged or commit a crime.

In Minnesota, children under the age of 14 cannot be charged as an adult with a criminal offense, but can be adjudicated delinquent in the juvenile justice system.

Most teens accused of crimes are held liable through that mostly confidential process, where a minor as young 10 can be petitioned with a delinquency offense. A new state law will raise the minimum age of delinquency to 13 in 2026.

Juvenile criminal records are accessible to the public only if the offense is a felony and the youth was at least 16. The juvenile courts shield their identities because a public record of their crime could be a barrier to attending college, obtaining a job or renting an apartment.

Star Tribune staff writers Jeff Hargarten and Christopher Snowbeck contributed to this story.