Category: Minneapolis, Minnesota Local News

A jury of Minnesotans from across the state was selected Thursday for the first Feeding Our Future criminal trial.

The four-day process was unusually long to find jurors who weren’t connected with or had strong opinions about the high-profile federal meal fraud case.

The 12 jurors and six alternates, who are mostly white and from the Twin Cities, were sworn in. Opening statements are scheduled to start Monday in the trial, which could last six weeks.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel spent more than 22 hours this week questioning more than 70 potential jurors for the trial of seven defendants with ties to a Shakopee restaurant overseen by Feeding Our Future, a former St. Anthony nonprofit.

Prosecutors allege that the defendants — like the 63 other people charged in the sprawling case — stole millions of federal dollars reimbursing meal programs that feed low-income children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prosecutors have said that the more than $250 million fraud scheme is one of the biggest fraud cases in Minnesota history and one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country.

The case has sparked hundreds of local and national news stories since the FBI investigation was publicly revealed more than two years ago — publicity that made it difficult to find Minnesotans who hadn’t heard of Feeding Our Future or didn’t have a strong opinion about the allegations.

In all, 1,000 Minnesotans from across the state were summoned by mail for the case — more than usual. The pool of potential jurors was narrowed to nearly 400 people who responded to the summons or didn’t get excused — about four or five times the usual number.

The case also stirred up strong reactions from potential jurors because the programs involved children in need and federal tax dollars. One 37-year-old woman said she would struggle being unbiased about a case that took money from kids.

“The scale of this case is so huge,” added a 38-year-old woman from Rockford, excused because of her opinions about the allegations affecting children. “That sort of hits me in the heart because I’m a parent.”

The struggle to find impartial jurors was magnified by the case’s wide-reaching connections to schools, nonprofits and more than 500 potential witnesses. Several potential jurors knew witnesses, while a couple knew other jurors.

Many potential jurors said they heard of Feeding Our Future in the news when the FBI raided the nonprofit in January 2022, though few could recall details nor had they followed the coverage. Others found out about the investigation from a running group, a poker game or from co-workers. A 22-year-old was dismissed after she said her family had received food from Feeding Our Future in Burnsville.

“You’d have to live in a cave to not heard of this case,” a 68-year-old man said before he was dismissed.

Still, quite a few prospective jurors said they had never heard of the case and didn’t pay attention to any local news.

The jurors and six alternates range in age from 23 to 70, and come from cities across the metro as well as Belle Plaine and Faribault.

Struggle to find jurors

The massive case centers on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reimbursements to nonprofits, schools and daycares to feed low-income children after school and during the summer, programs with loosened oversight and rules during the pandemic.

Prosecutors allege that defendants spent little to no money on food, submitting fake invoices or attendance rosters to collect millions of dollars to buy lakeside homes, luxury cars and trips, and to give kickbacks to one another. Since September 2022, 70 people have been charged or indicted and, of those, 18 have pleaded guilty.

Some jurors trekked hours from across Minnesota to downtown Minneapolis for the four-day selection process at the courtroom, which was packed with more than a dozen attorneys representing the defendants or prosecution team.

One by one, Brasel asked each potential juror at least 26 questions about news coverage and their feelings of law enforcement or attorneys who may testify and of Muslims or people with East African backgrounds, given that a number of the witnesses and defendants have connections to Somalia. She also asked if jurors had a connection to the USDA or Minnesota Department of Education, which oversaw the free meal programs in the state, both of which have faced scrutiny for oversight in the programs.

Defendants in this trial — Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Said Shafii Farah, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff and Hayat Mohamed Nur — have been charged with wire fraud and money laundering, among other charges. In court documents, their attorneys argued they didn’t knowingly or intentionally commit any crime or defraud anyone, saying that they believed they were providing “real meals, to real people.”

They collectively received more than $40 million for submitting claims for more than 18 million meals to children.

A man received a sentence topping 21 years Thursday for taking part in a rolling gun battle on a downtown Minneapolis street that led to one of the two vehicles hitting and killing a young woman standing at a corner with her scooter.

Christopher L. Walker, 35 of Fridley was sentenced in Hennepin County District Court after pleading guilty to third-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder in connection with the death of Autumn Rose Merrick, 18, of Minneapolis on Oct. 6, 2021, in the North Loop. Merrick was killed after leaving work.

With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Walker is expected to serve the first 14 years of his 21⅔-year term in prison and the balance on supervised release.

Co-defendant Marvel G. Williams, 35, of St. Paul was sentenced in March to a term of 24¼ years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and a gun-possession count.

“This incident was extraordinarily dangerous and violent,” County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement. “Mr. Walker’s conduct took the life of one person and endangered the lives of countless others as he drove erratically and at high speeds through Minneapolis. When necessary, we will seek lengthy periods of incapacitation to keep the public safe, and that is what occurred in this case.”

According to the charges:

Police responded to gunfire shortly after 11 p.m. near N. 5th Street and 6th Avenue, where officers soon saw a black Range Rover speeding into the intersection and then heard a crash. The Range Rover had hit a light pole and caught fire. The other vehicle, a silver Dodge Durango, had rammed into a building.

Walker, Williams and another person in the Range Rover were seriously hurt.

A friend with Merrick said the two were riding scooters to the Holiday gas station at that intersection and waiting on the corner when the Durango sped toward them. The friend said Merrick was struck, pushed into a building and trapped beneath the vehicle. Officers saw two bullet holes in the Durango.

Video surveillance from a nearby business appeared to show the Range Rover chasing the Durango just before they crashed.

The driver of the Durango, Larvell Elmore, 37, of St. Peter, Minn., was sentenced to a five-year term after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun.

The Minneapolis City Council on Thursday approved a longtime transportation official to be the city’s new public works director.

Timothy Sexton, who previously served as an assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Department of Public Transportation, was nominated by Mayor Jacob Frey last month. On Thursday, the council unanimously ratified the nomination.

Sexton replaces MnDOT Commissioner Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who was ratified as city operations officer in December.

Sexton most recently served as the assistant commissioner for sustainability, planning and program management for MnDOT, overseeing a staff of 350. He worked at the agency since 2014. Before that, he worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation since 2006, and prior to that he designed and constructed green roofing projects in Germany.

The city’s public works department spends some $440 million annually and has more than 1,100 employees whose duties include street repair, plowing, garbage and recycling collection, water and emergency sewer repairs.

Article and photos by Becky Fillinger

The 40th anniversary of Mia’s Art in Bloom (AiB) Festival opens today, April 25, and runs through the 28th.  Admission is free and open to everyone. As you wander from gallery to gallery, you’ll be delighted to see how over 100 local floral artists interpret artworks chosen by a Mia curator.

Perry McGowan with his floral arrangement to accompany Portrait of a Girl by Georg Pencz

We spoke with Perry McGowan, and greatly admired his interpretation of Portrait of a Girl by Georg Pencz in Gallery 342. McGowan has been a participating floral artist at AiB for 6 years but was quick to explain that he is a CPA, not a florist or artist by training. “It’s a huge honor to be chosen to participate and to be able to see your sculpture in a public place, especially at Mia. It’s an absolute joy to see people respond and connect to my, and my co-artist Zuzana Menzlova’s, sculpture.”

Mia welcomed over 60,000 visitors last year to AiB and this year should also see record crowds. Prepare for crowds and give yourself time to appreciate the wonderful pairings of Mia’s artworks alongside gorgeous floral interpretations. The museum’s restaurant will be open daily during the festival, and food trucks will be onsite as well. Full event information can be found here.

Billboard by Grace Hartigan

The Intrigue by James Ensor

Nanbozhoo and Toad Woman by Rabbett Strickland

The Smoker by Édouard Manet

Although admission to AiB is free and open to everyone, it’s important to realize that it is the Friends of the Institute’s most essential annual fundraiser. Funds raised enable Friends to sponsor events like AiB and to continue Mia’s mission of sustaining and enhancing Mia’s collections, exhibitions and programs. Please donate generously to support Art in Bloom!

Minneapolis Public Schools and the union representing teachers and support professionals have reached a tentative contract agreement, avoiding a strike authorization vote that had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

The news of the agreement between the district and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers came early Thursday after a long bargaining session that started Wednesday night.

“As we keep our students at the center, we worked together to reach an agreement that honors the hard work of our licensed staff and recognizes our budgetary constraints. We look forward to continued partnership,” Superintendent Dr. Lisa Sayles-Adams said in a statement.

No details of the agreement were released and they won’t be until union membership ratifies the deal, the statement from the district said.

Union members were seeking higher wages.

Teachers had been working for nearly a year after the most recent contract expired. Teachers and support staff last went on strike in 2022 when they walked off the job for three weeks.

“We worked together collaboratively in service to the students of Minneapolis Public Schools and reached an agreement that we are both proud of,” union President Greta Callahan in a statement. “Our time today was incredibly productive, and we believe it is a new day for MPS.”

The union representing Minneapolis Public Schools teachers and education support professionals will ask its members to vote Thursday and Friday on whether to authorize a strike, allowing them to walk off the job if they can’t reach a contract agreement with the district.

If members authorize a strike, it’s not certain the walkout would happen. Union leaders would still need to decide that a strike is necessary, set a date for it and notify the district. State law requires the union to give the district at least 10 days’ notice before the first day of a strike.

According to a Minneapolis Federation of Teachers news release, the decision to take a strike vote came early Wednesday after an 18-hour negotiation session failed to produce tentative contract agreements. The union has been pushing for wage increases that leaders say will help stabilize staff turnover.

“In the negotiation session that began Tuesday and finished before dawn Wednesday, the district did not improve its salary offer since the two sides negotiated on April 4,” the release said. “This is unacceptable at a time when MPS is losing educators to other districts.”

The Minneapolis Public School district issued a statement Monday saying it “remains committed to reaching a tentative agreement with MFT as soon as possible.”

Over the past few months, district leaders have announced cuts — including the equivalent of more than 200 full-time jobs — to close a historic $115 million gap in next year’s budget, which was calculated based on salary offers made in contract bargaining in early March.

The district’s teachers and support staff have worked on an expired contract for 300 days. Minneapolis teachers and support staff went on strike for nearly three weeks in March 2022.

Italy’s Culture Ministry officially has suspended art loans to the Minneapolis Institute of Art following disputes over the 1st century Roman sculpture “Doryphoros.”

Italian authorities believe the statue, which originated in the south of Naples, was illegally excavated in the 1970s. Mia said it purchased it for $2.5 million in 1986 from art dealer Elie Borowski.

Italy first requested return of the statue in March 2022, after an Italian court ruled that Mia needed to give back the ancient sculpture that had long been displayed in the museum’s second-floor rotunda near the Target Wing. The “Doryphoros” is one of a number of Roman copies based on original works by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos, and the one that Mia owns, made in the 1st century B.C.E., is one of the best preserved.

Mia said in 2022 that if it was contacted by Italian authorities, it would “review the matter and respond accordingly,” but two years later the matter is unresolved. In turn, Italy has banned loans to the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

“An Italian court has established that the ‘Doryphoros’ statue was illegally excavated in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy, and exported in 1976 and belongs to the national heritage of this country,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. “However, the MIA has decided to not respect the court decision, although it is proved that the people in charge at the time of the purchase (1980s) knew about the illegal provenance.”

Minneapolis Institute of Art denies that is in the wrong, stating that the claims are unproven.

“In 1984, while the work was on display in a German museum, Italy initiated a legal proceeding to claim the work,” Mia spokeswoman Lynn Farmer said. “In 1986, only after that proceeding was concluded — Italy’s claim was denied by the German government, and the work was exported from Germany and imported into the United States — did Mia agree to purchase the sculpture.”

Mia is also displeased with “recent press reports” and believes that “the media is not an appropriate forum to address unproven allegations.”

Italy believes that its reasons for halting loans to Mia are legitimate, and Zuchtriegel confirmed Wednesday that the ban had begun.

“The Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, and the Director of the museum department at the Ministry, Massimo Osanna, decided to stop all collaboration and loans between Italian state museums and the MIA,” he said.

The museum stated, “Where proof has not been provided, as well as where Mia has evidence reasonably demonstrating that a claim is not supported, Mia has declined to transfer the work.”

In October 2022, Mia hosted the major exhibition “Botticelli and Renaissance Florence: Masterworks from the Uffizi.” Works on view were rarely seen outside of Italy, and Mia was the only U.S. stop for those works.

Mia said it has “a long and successful history of exchange and scholarship with Italian museums,” and has decided to honor outgoing loan commitments to ensure that “its Italian colleagues do not suffer because of the Ministry’s embargo decision.”

Lidia and Sean by Water Works Pavilion with the 3rd Avenue Bridge in the background. Photo credit Owamni

Italian-American cooking icon Lidia Bastianich was recently in town interviewing Sean Sherman for her special Lidia Celebrates America: Changemakers. Sean talked to Lidia about indigenous food knowledge, how his nonprofit, North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS), is uncovering, collecting, and disseminating that knowledge, and how understanding these very different ways of gathering food and eating can benefit everyone in our society.

Mark you calendar with a reminder to look for the episode this December on Twin Cities PBS!

Lidia samples dishes, ingredients and drinks with Sean at Owamni. Photo credit Owamni

University of Minnesota police arrested nine people on Tuesday after a pro-Palestinian encampment set up overnight on the Northrop Mall on the Twin Cities campus.

Video and photos posted to social media showed student groups pitched tents about 4 a.m. and placed signs aimed at showing “solidarity with the people of Palestine.” About two hours later, university police arrived.

“The group was asked to disperse by 7 a.m. and told they would be arrested if they chose to stay past that time,” the university said in a statement. “Some of those present chose to disperse and continue peacefully protesting, but nine chose to remain and were arrested without incident.”

University police removed the tents, and Hennepin County jail rosters show they brought in nine people on misdemeanor trespass charges.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar made an appearance at the campus protest Tuesday night on the lawn outside the U’s Coffman Memorial Union, praising demonstrators.

“I am incredibly moved by your courage and bravery as a student body in putting your bodies on the line to stand in solidarity to end the genocide taking place in Gaza at this moment,” Omar said through a loudspeaker.

The protest comes at a time when students at other campuses across the country, including Columbia and Yale universities, are holding similar demonstrations. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, was one of the students who protested at Columbia University while a student at Barnard College in New York. Following her roughly 10-minute-long speech to the protesters, Omar told the Star Tribune she feels like universities “have forgotten their purpose in facilitating opportunities for kids to exercise their First Amendment rights.”

“I think colleges and universities need to do some soul-searching, because history is not going to be on their side,” she added.

University officials across the nation are facing pressure to balance the free speech rights of students and faculty with a need to protect students from differing backgrounds. The U.S. Department of Education has reported a rise in complaints of both antisemitism and Islamophobia since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel and the Israeli strikes in Gaza. The U is one of more than 100 universities under investigation for possible discrimination, its case stemming from a complaint on antisemitism.

The university’s statement said it “supports and respects free speech through lawful protest.”

“As a public research university, demonstrations where groups express diverse views and opinions occur regularly on our campus,” the statement said.

It also said the encampment violated both state trespassing law and a university policy that prohibits setting up tents without a permit.

Hours after the initial demonstration, hundreds of people gathered outside the student union to repeat calls to support Palestinian people, divest from companies that support Israel and condemn the arrests. Some of people who attended were U students or employees. Others, including Siinian Ephrem, attend other schools in the area but joined the event to show solidarity.

“They have the right to protest what’s going on in Palestine,” Ephrem said.

The event was organized by Students for a Democratic Society, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Young Democratic Socialists of America and Students for Climate Justice. During the first hour, people heard from speakers and repeated chants such as “Justice is our demand,” or other statements accusing Israel of promoting terrorism or apartheid.

In a statement later Tuesday, Steve Hunegs, executive director of Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, thanked the university for its responses, noting that reports of antisemitism have increased across the nation and that some students feel “it is no longer safe to be visibly Jewish on campus.”

“Today’s protests may be about many things, but peace between Israelis and Palestinians isn’t one of them,” Hunegs said.

Staff writer Louis Krauss contributed to this story.

St. Paul prosecutors charged a teenager in the March shooting that killed a Minneapolis man.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Deshawn Houston, 17, with two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of second-degree attempted murder. Houston was arrested in St. Cloud on March 29. Prosecutors have signaled their intention to petition to try Houston as an adult.

Authorities believe Houston killed 23-year-old Devon Johnson of Minneapolis last month, and interviews suggest Johnson died in a drug deal gone wrong. According to charging documents:

St. Paul police were sent to the 1300 block of Wilson Avenue on March 14 after 911 callers reported hearing gunshots. Officers arrived at 10:58 p.m. and found evidence of a crash but no suspects or victims. Moments later officers on Minnehaha Avenue E. and N. Frank Street pulled over a Jeep Liberty driving erratically. The driver, identified as Z.M.P in charging documents, said his friend in the back seat was shot. Police pulled the wounded man out and began CPR, but he died at the scene. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner identified the man as Johnson, and said he died from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Z.M.P told investigators he and Johnson drove to the Wilson Avenue site to sell marijuana. The buyer, identified as D.H.M, approached with a teen later identified as Houston. Houston allegedly pointed a long-barrel gun at Z.M.P during the deal and demanded drugs. Z.M.P. tried grabbing the gun as Johnson drove away, but it went off.

Z.M.P. says Johnson crashed into several vehicles before Z.M.P. took over and put the wounded Johnson in the back seat. He claimed to be driving toward a hospital when police stopped him, and from a lineup he picked a person identified D.H.M. as the person who set up the drug deal.

Authorities arrested D.H.M. on April 1. He told investigators that he went to the an apartment on the 1300 block of Wilson Avenue and invited others over to smoke marijuana. At one point D.H.M. said the group asked him to contact his source to buy more weed. He arranged to buy 38 grams from Z.M.P, but Houston allegedly pulled the gun as the deal was underway and demanded Z.M.P.’s possessions.

D.H.M. said Houston fired at the vehicle as it fled. He claimed he didn’t know Houston planned the robbery.

Investigators interviewed a woman who confirmed she knows D.H.M. as her brother, though they are not related. She claimed to see the gun possibly used to shoot Johnson that night, and said D.H.M. and others plotted a robbery before leaving for 1300 Wilson Avenue. T.M.S. said D.H.M. returned from the deal “hysterical over what happened.”

Houston declined an interview with police.