In a raw moment in Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Ohio Senator JD Vance shared a brief exchange of empathy when Walz recounted a time his teenage son witnessed a shooting.
While discussing guns during the year’s first and only debate between the running mates, Walz described school shootings as the “worst nightmare” of parents before revealing that his teenage son Gus had witnessed an act of gun violence up close.
“Look, I’ve got a 17-year-old and he witnessed a shooting at a community center playing volleyball,” said Walz, prompting a quick response of “awful” from Vance. “Those things don’t leave you,” Walz added.
The incident took place at the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center in St. Paul, where a 27-year-old employee shot a 16-year-old in the head during an altercation. Walz described school shootings as the “worst nightmare” of parents before saying that his 17-year-old son Gus had witnessed a shooting at a community center.
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The incident Walz referenced occurred in January 2023 at the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center in St. Paul, near Central High School, where his son was a student. During an altercation outside the building, 27-year-old rec center employee Exavir Binford Jr. shot 16-year-old JuVaughn Turner in the head.
According to court documents, two teenagers got into a fight at the rec center, which escalated to Binford shooting Turner before fleeing the scene.
Turner survived but was left with permanent brain damage and now suffers from violent seizures, according to his family. In February 2024, Binford was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to first-degree assault. At his sentencing, an attorney representing Turner’s mother revealed that Turner had to undergo surgery to remove a portion of his skull.
Exavir Binford Jr., 27, was sentenced to more than 10 years in the shooting witnessed by Gov. Tim Walz’s son, Gus, last year.
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Though Walz had previously mentioned the incident, this was the first time he discussed it on a national stage. Earlier, in a September 12 campaign speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Walz had criticized Vance for characterizing school shootings as a “fact of life” in America while advocating for increased school security following the Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia.
“Think about that—families forever broken. Too many of us have been there,” Walz told supporters last month. “My own son was in a place where someone was shot in the head. Too many of us have experienced this.”
The Jimmy Lee Recreation Center shooting became a key point in broader discussions about gun control in Minnesota. Walz, once a darling of the NRA, has since become far more progressive on gun issues, transforming into a vocal advocate for giving local governments more authority over firearm restrictions in public spaces. In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio earlier this year, he supported policies that would allow cities like St. Paul to ban guns in areas like recreation centers.
“As a parent of a youth who was at that facility, I think that would have been a good decision to keep those firearms out of there,” Walz said in the MPR interview.
The Walz-Vance debate stood in stark contrast to the more combative September 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Both Walz and Vance avoided personal attacks and found common ground on several occasions, resulting in a notably less contentious exchange.
