A man is accused of fatally shooting a Castle Rock Township, Minnesota, woman on Christmas Eve, which, according to court documents filed Monday, was her birthday.
The criminal complaint said Dakota County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the shooting at a Castle Rock Township home around 2:23 p.m. They found the man on the second floor of the residence with blood on his hands and the back of his head and the 26-year-old woman lying on the bed in her bedroom. She died at the scene.
According to court documents, the man told the deputies the gun was in “the room” before he was taken to the hospital. Investigators found a handgun and two spent shell casings in the home. One of the casings was near the bed where the woman was found, and the other was underneath her.
The woman’s mother told deputies the man and woman lived in a room on the second floor of the home, and they had “two children in common,” court documents said. The woman’s brother, who also lives in the residence, said they had been together for between six and seven years but weren’t married.
According to the complaint, the woman’s mother said one of the children ran downstairs and said they were scared after hearing something. They then asked the child what they heard, and the child “banged on the wall twice.”
The woman’s mother went upstairs and saw the man, who told them, “I’ve been shot. She shot me, call 911,” per court documents, and then said, “I shot her.”
The complaint said the mother then went into her daughter’s bedroom and found her covered in blood on her bed “with her hands in front of her face as if she was protecting herself.”
Court documents said the woman’s brother was downstairs in his room when the woman’s mother ran in to ask for help. He went upstairs and saw the man in the hallway.
Deputies later learned that the man told the woman’s brother he shot himself and that “he caught the woman cheating,” according to the complaint.
The man is charged with one count of second-degree intentional murder, court documents said. If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison.
Folks in Dakota County, Minnesota, are raising environmental and health concerns after lead battery casings were discovered in the ground.
Brian McMahon documented what he discovered while helping to redevelop a property in Eagan, taking pictures of what he says are chopped-up lead battery casings in the ground.
“The pictures showing the trench with the battery casings and the containers being hauled off by the roll-off truck. Those are literally the truck was parked right in that area there. The battery casings were over here,” McMahon said.
McMahon says the reason for the buried casing goes back decades. It’s a practice he believes stopped around 2000.
“Pea gravel is one of the more expensive gravels, and battery casings or chips work well as a replacement or substitute for pea gravel. Cities allowed it. It was common practice back then, and it was also used as a road base. Underneath the asphalt, there were concrete, driveways, parking lots, that kind of thing,” McMahon said.
Brian McMahon
McMahon explained the danger of having battery casings in the ground.
“The most obvious one is lead, because everybody understands that lead is, you know, bad. It’s not 100% efficient. You’re not going to get all the lead out of the battery casings,” McMahon said.
McMahon showed us what he’s talking about.
“These are typical batteries that you’d find in automobiles or semi-trucks or lawn and garden equipment and snowmobiles,” McMahon said.
He explained the lead in the plastic casing is removed.
“You’ve got lead studs, lead plates in here. They claim now that they’re washing the battery casings, that’s a very costly process. But in the old days, they would literally just break them open. The main goal was to get the valuable part out of there, which is the lead, and the remaining black plastic is still saturated with the lead. So what a lot of guys would do is they literally just throw them in a pile and break them up with an excavator or some type of equipment, and have laborers just hand sift the lead out of there as best they can,” McMahon said.
University of Minnesota professor Carl Rosen is an extension soil scientist who has studied lead in soil.
“There are things that we have done in the past that would not be acceptable today. Maybe 50, 60 years ago, it was thought that this was a good way of reusing plastic, reusing something, and getting more life out of it. But I don’t think they thought about the contamination from lead,” Rosen said.
He says there’s no way of knowing how much contamination there could be from the battery casings.
“It just tells me that it’s in the soil. It could be more widespread than we think, but I don’t think there’s any way of being able to find out where it is, unless you do a test on every area where there’s a house,” Rosen said.
In 2018, WCCO shared the story of a Ramsey County couple who learned their home was built on battery casings.
The homeowner told WCCO, “I figured I got about a thousand batteries on this lot. No one ever suspected they were contaminated.”
The couple felt stuck, unable to sell with the known danger. The home has since been demolished.
“What is your concern with all of this?” Mayerle asked McMahon.
“My main concern is that we don’t know the extent of it,” McMahon said.
Dakota County Environmental has started keeping a list of sites where battery casings have been identified. Some areas reportedly treated, others unknown.
A number of them are on Gopher Resource property, a lead battery recycling plant. Others are nearby.
A resident provided WCCO with documentation regarding their subdivision formerly being a recycling/salvage facility, noting “clean-up … to remove remnant battery casings” and that “homeowners may find remnants of battery casings located on their property.”
Gopher Resource told WCCO:
“Gopher Resource is committed to the safe and responsible recycling of lead batteries, which helps reduce landfill waste, conserve natural resources, and strengthen the domestic supply chain. Our work supports one of the nation’s most successful closed-loop industries, with over 99% of lead batteries being recycled and each new battery typically containing 80% recycled material.
Decades ago, it was not uncommon for entities throughout the state, including scrapyard operators and similar businesses in Dakota County, to collect spent lead batteries. Some of those businesses would separate the battery casings from the lead and provide the casing material for use in construction, landscaping, septic systems, drainage fields, and similar projects. To be clear, Gopher Resource was not one of those businesses and such activities were not part of our operations. In the past, we have collaborated with Dakota County to assist homeowners who discovered battery casing materials on their property by processing the materials when they were removed even though we had no connection to or responsibility for the placement of the materials on their land. It has never been our practice to give away battery casings or any other byproduct of our recycling process. In fact, for decades, Gopher Resource has processed, treated and pelletized plastic battery casings so that we can sell the plastic back to battery manufacturers for use in the production of new batteries. This is a key part of our business and reflects our commitment to safety, regulatory compliance, and environmental responsibility.”
In the last year, casings found on the upcoming Amazon site in Eagan prompted the state pollution control agency to respond. The online retail giant bought the former Thomson Reuters campus for tens of millions of dollars earlier this year. Dakota County documents show the lead-impacted soil was properly disposed of in September.
McMahon says he felt compelled to speak up.
“So it’s a serious health issue, it’s a serious governmental failure on my I believe, on their part, and I think that somebody needs to point that out and see what, if anything, can be done about it,” McMahon said.
Click here to see information shared by MPCA about what to do if you discover battery casings.
The state health department told WCCO no one could speculate about how much lead could be left or the health impact.
Have you come across battery casings in the state? We want to hear from you. Send us a tip here.
A man from Burnsville, Minnesota, is accused of scamming thousands of dollar from more than a dozen Twin Cities residents who sought his tree care services.
The 44-year-old man was charged in Dakota County earlier this week with two counts of felony theft by swindle in connection to 13 reported cases between Aug. 1, 2024, and Nov. 1 of this year.
According to the criminal complaint, the Burnsville Police Department started investigating the defendant in August “for tree care services that were only partially or never completed.”
Five of the 13 victims reside in Burnsville, while the other eight live in Apple Valley, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville, Prior Lake and Savage. The total amount he’s accused of stealing is more than $17,000.
Court documents show patterns of the defendant’s alleged misconduct include making excuses for why the work was never completed, refusal to issue full or partial refunds and subsequently blocking customers’ phone numbers.
The family of a Minnesota postal worker has filed a federal lawsuit after police and correctional officers allegedly ignored signs of his stroke for hours and he died in custody.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday, accusing Eagan police, Dakota County and its correctional officers of demonstrating a “deliberate indifference” to the 50-year-old Cottage Grove resident’s medical needs during the five hours and 40 minutes he was in custody.
According to the lawsuit, Kinglsey Fifi Bimpong left work early on Nov. 16, 2024, due to a headache, and was pulled over by Eagan police after he drove into oncoming traffic. From the responding officer’s body camera, the lawsuit says Bimpong “exhibited serious physical and cognitive abnormalities.”
Bimpong could not tell Eagan officers who pulled him over “the simplest of facts – his own name, where he was coming from, where he was going, or where he lived,” according to the lawsuit filed by head attorney Katie Bennett.
The responding officer called a drug recognition evaluator, who didn’t complete a typical 12-step evaluation to determine if Bimpong was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the lawsuit says. The officers noted that he did not smell of alcohol and found nothing in his car to indicate drug or alcohol use. At the traffic stop site and throughout the evening, the lawsuit states that the officers had multiple conversations discussing whether Bimpong was suffering from a medical issue.
The officers then placed Bimpong under arrest and took him to the Eagan Police Department for a blood draw. While at the facility, the lawsuit says Bimpong “stumbled” and “remained confused” and at times “nodded off to sleep.”
An emergency medical provider at the station asked officers if they were planning to take him to the hospital, but the responding officer said “it’s a whole thing,” and instead, officers transported Bimpong to the Dakota County Jail, the lawsuit says. While transporting him, the responding officer was recorded on body camera video saying, “Is this dude having a stro–.” (The lawsuit says the word “stroke” was cut off because the officer muted his camera.)
According to the suit, Bimpong arrived at the jail, where he lost balance and had trouble walking. Despite needing help walking to the jail, Bimpong’s booking paperwork said he did not require further evaluation, the lawsuit states.
In the jail cell, the suit says he stumbled and limped and rolled on the ground for hours. Dakota County Jail procedure requires that all inmates are observed by a staff member at least once every 30 minutes. Multiple officers observed Bimpong struggling on the ground for several hours, yet marked his status as “OK,” the lawsuit says.
“[He] ends up losing control of his bladder, rolling around in his own urine,” Bennett said. “Clearly in pain and struggling for hours when no one is helping him.”
A nurse entered his cell after three hours and 26 minutes, at which time he was cold to the touch and unresponsive, the lawsuit states. The nurse administered Narcan three times without a response.
He was taken to the hospital, where his alcohol and drug screens came back negative, and a CT scan showed a hemorrhage and swelling in his brain, the suit states. He was declared brain dead on Nov. 18, and taken off a ventilator a day later.
“At every step along the way with Eagan and jail defendants, it was a conscious choice of deliberate inference to not bring him to the hospital,” said Bennett.
After his death, an investigation performed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections found that none of the Dakota County correctional officers were current with their first aid and CPR certifications. The investigation also found the correctional officers had failed to document any emergency medical information or conduct a mental health screening, in violation of state law.
Bennett said that “police and correctional officers acted on incorrect and unfounded assumptions about Kingsley as justification for treating a person suffering from classic stroke symptoms with callous indifference that resulted in his death.”
“Hours after Eagan officers transported Mr. Bimpong to the jail, it was discovered that he had experienced a stroke, which was fatal,” the City of Eagan said in a statement. “While Mr. Bimpong’s death is tragic, he was not exhibiting an objectively serious medical condition that was obvious to lay persons at the time he was in the Eagan officers’ custody and there (was) no indication that he required emergent medical treatment.”
The lawsuit seeks $120 million in damages and policy changes at the Dakota County Jail.
Dakota County says it cannot comment at the time due to the ongoing litigation process.
Three more measles cases have been reported in Minnesota in the past week.
The Minnesota Department of Health said the new cases all involved unvaccinated children, ages 5 to 17, who are all from the same family.
Health officials are working with local health departments to contact people believed to have been exposed.
These new cases bring the state’s number of identified cases this year to eight.
“Unfortunately, we still see kids die of measles and it is a vaccine-preventable disease,” said Stacene Maroushek, pediatric infectious disease specialist with Hennepin Healthcare. “Three is considered an outbreak and it is concerning because we know our vaccine rates have really dropped off since COVID.”
Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, and in some cases can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness or death.
The best way to prevent measles, according to health experts, is through immunization.
Officials recommend children receive two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — the first at 12 to 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.
Maroushek blames the current outbreaks of the disease, once thought to be eliminated more than two decades ago, on misinformation spread online — namely, that vaccines can cause autism.
“I think we as physicians need to do a better job of promoting all of the stuff that we actually know from a scientific standpoint, and good data, to a level that people can readily access and understand,” Maroushek said.
Earlier this summer, state health officials announced an unvaccinated child, also from Dakota County, exposed hundreds of people to measles during a visit to Mall of America’s Nickelodeon Universe.
Stephen Swanson is a web producer at CBS News Minnesota. Stephen was a floor director for a decade before moving to the WCCO-TV newsroom in 2011, where he focuses on general assignment reporting.
ROSEMOUNT, Minn. — Two people are dead, including a 15-year-old boy, following a head-on crash in the south metro on Monday.
The Dakota County Sheriff’s Offices says deputies responded to a crash on County Road 46 and Biscayne Avenue in Rosemount around 3:30 p.m.
According to witness reports, a 2012 Ford Fusion driven by a 15-year-old boy had been traveling east on County Road 46 when he moved into the westbound lane in an attempt to pass a semi-truck. The sheriff’s office says the area is a no-passing zone.
A 2014 Lincoln MKX driven by an 81-year-old man had been traveling in the westbound lane approximately a quarter-mile away. Both drivers swerved onto the north shoulder and collided head-on.
Both drivers suffered fatal injuries and died on the scene, according to the sheriff’s office. The driver of the Ford was identified as David Rosas of Rosemount. The Lincoln’s driver was identified as Dennis Dahlstrom of Champaign, Illinois.
The passenger of the Lincoln suffered life-threatening injuries and was transported to the hospital for treatment.
The Dakota County Sheriff’s Office praised “several heroic citizens” who stopped to help the victims before first responders arrived.
Riley Moser is a digital producer who covers breaking news and feature stories for CBS Minnesota. Riley started her career at CBS Minnesota in June 2022 and earned an honorable mention for sports writing from the Iowa College Media Association the same year.
MINNEAPOLIS — The fatal shooting of three first responders in Burnsville in February raised questions about gun rights. The killer couldn’t legally have a gun or ammo because of a prior conviction for a violent felony — but he did file a petition to the courts to overturn his lifetime ban. A Dakota County judge said no in 2020.
One-thousand-four-hundred-forty-eight petitions were filed over the last five years in Minnesota. The courts approved more than half of them, all from people who wanted to get back their right to have a gun and ammo in Minnesota, including Troy Horning.
“I think it just goes to show you know, that you’re giving people a second chance,” Horning said.
Even though it’s considered a lifetime ban, it isn’t for everyone. To get a better understanding of the data, we focused on Dakota County. WCCO found since 2019, 109 people there tried to have their gun rights restored. Of those, 72 succeeded.
Their rights were taken away for convictions involving drug offenses, assault, theft and terroristic threats.
Inside these petitions are their pleas for restoration.
LaShaun wrote, “I have paid my debt back to society.”
Another, “I am an upstanding citizen who cares about my community.”
Anna said, “I went to treatment in December of 2010 and have been sober since.”
Horning’s drug offense was 20 years ago.
“So just to show that how much I’ve changed. You know what I’m saying? You know, I’ve opened a business now — GQ Stucco and Stone and I’ve done tremendous stuff, gave back to the community, donate money to churches and stuff like that,” Horning said.
Many whose petitions were approved cited hunting as their driving force. Others wanted a gun for personal protection or simply just wanted the right to have one.
“It’s people that have been law-abiding. You know, grown up enough and understand enough the responsibility of carrying a live firearm,” Horning said when asked who deserves to have their rights restored.
Over the past five years in Dakota County, judges denied petitions for at least 10 people, including Shannon Gooden. He ended up getting guns illegally, then used the weapons to fire more than 100 rifle rounds at first responders in Burnsville, killing three and injuring another.
“First of all, are they being truthful and honest?” senior judge Jerome Abrams said when asked what he takes into consideration when looking at a petition.
He sat on the bench in Dakota County for a decade.
“How do people get into this? And it’s a time and place type of thing. Did they do it when they were younger, did they do it when they were older, you look very carefully at this notion. Was a firearm used in whatever circumstance gave rise to this ban on firearms,” Abrams said.
Judges may grant a petition, but Abrams says there’s no obligation. They’re guided by the statute and it’s up to petitioners to provide “good cause” in order to be approved.
“You know it when you see it. It’s situational, so what is good cause? It’s something that’s legally sufficient but usually, the filter you apply is on is, the fancy legal word for it is circumspection. That is you want to be wary, you want to be careful,” Abrams said.
Petitions we saw denied had a similar theme: The original charge involved a gun, the person remains a threat to public safety, not enough time has passed or there are recent charges.
A judge denied Anthony Wallace’s petition last year.
“It’s not remaining law-abiding,” Wallace said. “Had some other things since, but not serious things.”
He thinks errors in his file contributed to his denial.
In the paperwork, the judge noted, “Even if those … are subtracted” his threat to public safety remains.
Jennifer Mayerle happily returned to Minnesota and WCCO, where she began her career as an intern. The Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist joined WCCO as a reporter in May 2014. She also anchors “WCCO Saturday Morning” from 8-9 a.m.
HASTINGS, Minn. — The mother of a 3-year-old boy who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2020 was sentenced Wednesday to four years probation, the Dakota County Attorney’s Office announced.
Queenetta McDaniel, 36, of Maplewood, pled guilty to one count of manslaughter in the second degree on July 24, 2023. The state requested McDaniel be sentenced to 41 months in prison.
“I am disappointed in the court’s decision given the facts of the case,” Dakota County Attorney Kathy Keena said. “Such a tragic and senseless death due to the negligence of Ms. McDaniel.”
First responders were called to a West St. Paul apartment on Dec. 7, 2020, on a report of a child not breathing. The child was rushed to Children’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the boy died of a fentanyl overdose.
Police suspected that McDaniel was under the influence of drugs at the time due to her behavior. A blood sample collected by investigators showed fentanyl and a metabolite of fentanyl present during a toxicology analysis.
Riley Fletcher Moser is a digital line producer at wcco.com. At WCCO, she often covers breaking news and feature stories. In 2022, Riley received an honorable mention in sports writing from the Iowa College Media Association.
HASTINGS, Minn. — The mother of a 3-year-old boy who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2020 was sentenced Wednesday to four years probation, the Dakota County Attorney’s Office announced.
Queenetta McDaniel, 36, of Maplewood, pled guilty to one count of manslaughter in the second degree on July 24, 2023. The state requested McDaniel be sentenced to 41 months in prison.
“I am disappointed in the court’s decision given the facts of the case,” Dakota County Attorney Kathy Keena said. “Such a tragic and senseless death due to the negligence of Ms. McDaniel.”
First responders were called to a West St. Paul apartment on Dec. 7, 2020, on a report of a child not breathing. The child was rushed to Children’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the boy died of a fentanyl overdose.
Police suspected that McDaniel was under the influence of drugs at the time due to her behavior. A blood sample collected by investigators showed fentanyl and a metabolite of fentanyl present during a toxicology analysis.
Riley Fletcher Moser is a digital line producer at wcco.com. At WCCO, she often covers breaking news and feature stories. In 2022, Riley received an honorable mention in sports writing from the Iowa College Media Association.
