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AG Ellison to take over prosecution in murder of Zaria McKeever
In a statement Thursday, Ellison said he had requested Moriarty’s office refer the prosecution of the case to his office, but he was turned down.
MINNEAPOLIS — Editors Note: The above video first aired on 4/6/2023
Just one day after publicly disagreeing with Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s handling of a juvenile murder case, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has agreed to take over prosecution in the matter, at the request of Gov. Tim Walz and against the will of Moriarty.
“I have absolute confidence in Attorney General Ellison,” Governor Walz said in a release. “He has requested this important case and stepped up once again to serve the people of Minnesota. I know Keith will work tirelessly to seek justice and bring a modicum of peace to the grieving family.”
Zaria McKeever was shot to death in her apartment last November — allegedly by a 15-year-old, who along with his 17-year-old brother kicked in her apartment door. McKeever’s ex-boyfriend Erick Haynes allegedly gave them the gun and drove them there.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office under Mike Freeman moved to certify the boys as adults to be tried for murder alongside Haynes, but after Moriarty became Hennepin County Attorney, her office changed course — offering the boys a plea bargain to serve two years in the Red Wing juvenile prison and testify against Haynes.
Ellison appeared at a community event on Wednesday, where he proclaimed his disagreement with Moriarty’s handling of the case.
McKeever’s family had already requested Ellison to take the case from Moriarty and expressed worry on Wednesday that he wouldn’t fulfill his promise to them.
“You were our last hope. You gave us hope when we met with you,” said McKeever’s stepfather Paul Greer at the event.
In a statement Thursday, Ellison said he had requested Moriarty’s office refer the prosecution of the case to his office, but he was turned down.
“While I share the belief that too many juveniles are involved in the adult criminal justice system, accountability for the seriousness of this crime has been missing in this case. I respect that county attorneys are duly elected by their constituents to exercise their discretion; however, the disposition of the juvenile shooter that Hennepin County has proposed in this case is disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime committed and falls far short of the family’s and community’s expectations for justice and safety,” said Ellison, in his statement.
Moriarty issued her own statement Thursday afternoon, saying her office considered the factors of youth and what protects public safety in both the short and the long term.
“Prosecuting a juvenile for homicide without seeking an adult certification is not unprecedented in Minnesota. But the Attorney General’s decision to insert himself in a prosecution when an elected County Attorney is actively prosecuting a case is unprecedented,” said Moriarty in the statement.
Moriarty added that Ellison’s action to insert his office into the case undermines the longstanding constitutional authority, autonomy, and responsibility of elected prosecutors.
“I am sure that the Attorney General has disagreed with many outcomes in many cases in this state over the years, some because the sentences are too low and some because the sentences are too harsh. It is unfortunate that, in what has become a very high-profile case, he has decided to instigate an unprecedented intervention.” concludes Moriarty’s statement.
The move truly is an 11th-hour decision, as the 15-year-old was set to enter into the plea agreement Friday morning in juvenile court. Ellison’s team rather than Moriarty’s team will now attend that hearing, and the judge is likely to continue the matter to a later date.
Although some county attorneys across the state disagree with how Moriarty was handling the juvenile case, the Minnesota County Attorney’s Association disagreed with Walz using his power to take the case away from an elected county attorney actively prosecuting it.
Ellison ended up taking over the prosecution of the Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter cases, but in both those instances the county attorney voluntarily asked for assistance.
Minnesota’s governor has only once exercised the statutory ability to involuntarily remove a case from a county attorney.
In 1993 in Crow Wing County, Jack Graham was refusing to prosecute child sex abuse cases. Gov. Arne Carlson assigned the attorney general’s office to intervene at the request of the county sheriff and other officials.
Prior to formally asking Gov. Walz to assign him the case, Ellison wrote a letter to Judge Todd Fellman, who is presiding over the 15-year-old’s case, and asked Judge Fellman to reject Moriarty’s plea offer.
In the letter obtained by KARE 11 News, dated April 4, Ellison spells out more clearly how he disagrees with Moriarty’s characterization of the case. She emphasizes that the teens were influenced and manipulated by Haynes, the adult in the case.
But Ellison wrote, “This criminal act was developing for weeks and [the 15-year-old] had time to reflect and ask questions. [The 15-year-old] accepted a gun, a deadly weapon, and voluntarily discharged the gun. And, most heinous of all, [the 15-year-old] knew the decedent and he knew her daughter. This is not a case of a juvenile being manipulated. [The 15-year-old] knowingly and voluntarily killed the decedent.”
Ellison adds that “any offender who commits such a horrible murder should serve years in prison” and “the court should not allow [the 15-year-old] to avoid punishment and then terrorize the McKeever family and the rest of the community.”
Legal experts have told KARE 11 News that Judge Fellman does not have authority to reject a plea in an extended juvenile jurisdiction prosecution, which might have played a role in Ellison stepping in.
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Live Nation will operate the new amphitheater that will hold around 19,000 people.
SHAKOPEE, Minn. — There is excitement in the city of Shakopee as construction crews continue working on a 19,000-seat amphitheater near Canterbury Park.
This week, the city of Shakopee and developers announced Live Nation will operate the new amphitheater and the plan is to start hosting concerts in the summer of 2025.
“This is the largest amphitheater in Minnesota,” Shakopee Director of Planning and Development Michael Kerski said. “We’ve been told the plan with Live Nation is to hold between 30 and 45 shows in a normal season.”
Kerski says 2025 will be an abbreviated season because the concert venue will likely open later in the summer. The amphitheater is one piece of a larger entertainment district that is being built next to Canterbury Park.
“This is one of the largest redevelopments in the state,” Kerski said. “The site is over 140 acres. There is 28 acres still open for development.”
Besides the amphitheater, the entertainment district will include shops, restaurants and hotels.
City leaders are hoping this new entertainment district will reaffirm Shakopee’s commitment to being a premiere entertainment hub in the Twin Cities.
“We have Valleyfair. We have Canterbury Park with live racing and they have a card room, Mystic is just down the road,” Kerski said. “We have the Renaissance Festival. We’re used to big events.”
The Twin Cities music scene already features several unique live music venues, but developers believe this new amphitheater fills a void in the market.
There are other outdoor amphitheaters in the market, including The Ledge Amphitheater in Waite Park and Vetter Stone Amphitheater in Mankato, which each hold a few thousand people.
Target Field can also host outdoor concerts with a capacity of around 40,000 people, but Kerski says this new venue will bring big-name acts to the Twin Cities who are looking for a large permanent outdoor venue to host their shows.
“There will be great seating, skyboxes, a big lawn with beer gardens, things that just don’t exist at any of those other amphitheaters or facilities,” Kerski said.
“This venue is really designed around the customer and experience and the artist experience. The back of the house is really important for artists as they travel all over the country. The developers on this project wanted to have a facility in the back of the house where artists can relax and get ready for an event.”
The building, located at 345 Wabasha, has been a magnet for crime and drugs. An inspection on Dec. 9 found the Lowry Apartments unfit for human habitation.
ST PAUL, Minn. — A troubled St. Paul apartment building has been condemned, with city inspectors declaring it unfit for human habitation.
The Lowry Apartments are one of the Capital City’s biggest headaches, a magnet for crime and drugs. An inspection on Dec. 9 documented a lack of fire protection systems, inoperable heating facilities, active plumbing leaks, electrical systems that had been damaged or tampered with, and overall unsanitary conditions, among other things. A condemnation notice was immediately issued.
Being condemned means that all residents of the 134-unit affordable housing building must evacuate immediately. Included in the notice is a list of 25 action items/repairs that must be completed before the Lowry Apartments can reopen. Most are significant, making it unlikely residents will be able to return anytime soon.
The troubled building is owned by Madison Equities, St. Paul’s largest downtown property owner, which is in the process of trying to sell off most of its portfolio after the death of long-time owner Jim Crockarell in January. Court documents say commercial real estate group Frauneshuh partnered with the Halverson and Blaiser Group to manage the property and act on behalf of the owner with tenants and other third parties after the building was placed into receivership in late August.
“The building has been in decline, rapidly, since the owner died,” said resident Megan Thomas when KARE visited the Lowry apartments in August. “There’s a risk of violence, there’s a risk to health, I found a cockroach in an ice cube in my freezer last week because they are everywhere.”
Thomas has since moved from the building because of living conditions.
During that visit, the problems were obvious: The front door to the building was wide open, leaving the Lowry Apartments vulnerable to squatters, drug dealers, and others who were not residents. Windows were broken, plumbing leaked and the elevators were inoperable.
Residents were blindsided when a foreclosure notice appeared on the building in mid-August, leaving them wondering where they would go. The city of St. Paul stepped in to broker a receivership for the property, but it appears now that action was not enough to stem the tide of problems that plague the Lowry Apartments.
Hiding from the cold is what Jaelynn Hoggard is used to as a resident of the Lowry Apartments in Saint Paul.
“My body can’t handle the cold, like my pacemaker feels the cold and everything,” said Hoggard. “I saw them posting it on the door, like the condemned notice. And my heart just shot into my stomach.”
Jaelynn is disabled and says there are times the elevators don’t work. Because of the living conditions, she had to give back her service animal.
“That was the hardest thing to do,” she said.
“Zara Frost” publishes a Substack newsletter that includes audio and video recordings that are not in the possession of any other news outlet — or Bock’s attorney.
MINNEAPOLIS — Editor’s note: The video above first aired on KARE 11 in September 2024.
Aimee Bock, the former executive director of Feeding our Future and the top name associated with the $250 million pandemic child meal fraud case, is set to stand trial on Feb. 3.
But her lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, does not have access to materials he believes could exonerate Bock — despite those materials being cited in a series of posts on Substack — according to a motion filed by Udoibok on Wednesday.
The Substack newsletter “Nourishing Truth – Unpacking the Feeding Our Future Scandal” is written by Zara Frost. It is unclear whether that name is a pseudonym, whether Frost is a journalist, and whether Frost has connections to any of the 70 defendants charged in the sprawling case.
The general tone of the postings points blame away from Feeding Our Future defendants and back toward the Minnesota Department of Education, which was tasked with oversight of the federal child meal program during the pandemic.
One passage states, “The implications are clear. Either 1. MDE was catastrophically incompetent at its oversight duties, or 2. The department’s current narrative about early fraud concerns is, to put it politely, revisionist history.”
What is clear is that Frost’s 10 articles sent out to 16 subscribers as of Dec. 11 include details no other news outlet has published concerning the case, including audio recordings of conversations involving Hadith Ahmed, the former Feeding Our Future employee who agreed to plead guilty and help the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office with the case.
Those recordings were not used at the first trial involving Feeding our Future defendants earlier in 2024 despite the government using Ahmed as a key witness.
Udoibok believes the government has the recordings along with evidence concerning the reimbursement claims process from phones and tablets seized during the investigation that prosecutors did use in the first trial — but have not disclosed to Udoibok for Bock’s case.
“The withheld materials are crucial to Defendant’s defense as they provide insight into how Feeding Our Future’s claims were processed, which could exonerate Defendant by demonstrating that she did not oversee a fraudulent scheme. The Government’s failure to disclose these materials creates a reasonable probability that Defendant would not be able to mount an effective defense,” Udoibok wrote in his motion, claiming the prosecution is violating the Brady rule that requires disclosing all exculpatory evidence.
Bock and her co-defendants are due back in court Thursday for a status conference.
Zara Frost told KARE 11 News that the audio and video files were leaked to them, but has not yet answered a series of other questions.
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