Star Tribune
Sheriff’s deputy shot and killed in western Wisconsin
A western Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed Saturday night, the third such on-duty shooting death of a law enforcement officer in the region in a month, officials said.
The St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office identified the slain deputy as Kaitie Leising, 29, who had been with the department since 2022. The suspect also is dead.
“We will miss her infectious smile and personality,” Sheriff Scott Knudson said in a statement. “She will be missed by all she touched.”
Leising was shot just outside Glenwood City, Wis., 60 miles east of the Twin Cities, at about 6:15 p.m., according to a release from the Wisconsin Department of Justice. She was responding to a report of a possible drunken driver, who was stuck in a ditch. Shots were exchanged shortly after she arrived, officials said.
The deputy was taken to a nearby hospital and died there, according to state officials.
“The [suspect] fled and was later found deceased in a wooded area with a gunshot wound. There is no threat to the community,” a Department of Justice news release said.
Wisconsin officials identified the suspect as Jeremiah D. Johnson, 34. He was evasive toward Leising’s requests for a field sobriety test, and after about eight minutes he turned toward Leising, drew a handgun and shot her, the agency said. Leising fired back three times, but Johnson got away, the state Justice Department said. Officers recovered a handgun near Johnson’s body, the state Justice Department said.
Body camera footage captured the deputy’s shooting, the agency said.
On Sunday afternoon, Leising’s body was escorted by a law enforcement procession from the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office to a funeral home in Baldwin, Wis.
Emergency vehicles with lights flashing lined the overpasses on Interstate 94 in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and a massive American flag billowed atop the Baldwin exit.
Knudson said that funeral arrangements were pending, and that deputies and officers will stand vigil by Leising’s side until the services are complete.
At a home overlooking the shooting scene, Colonel Lightfoot said Sunday that he saw four vehicles at Wisconsin Hwy. 128 and County Road G — one of them a pickup truck driven by the alleged assailant. Two vehicles left, and two people in a second pickup truck were trying to pull the suspect from the ditch when the deputy arrived, he said.
“All of a sudden there were five shots fired, and a person took off running to the south-southwest of my property,” Lightfoot said. “And then I immediately called dispatch and let them know that an officer was down because I couldn’t see her.”
Lightfoot’s wife, Sarah, ran to the scene with towels to help stop the deputy’s bleeding.
“My wife felt for a pulse, but what I think she was feeling was her own pulse,” he said, adding the deputy was unresponsive.
Officers swarm scene
Lightfoot said dozens of squad cars and other vehicles swarmed the scene, and the investigation lasted into the night.
Glenwood City’s mayor confirmed the large law enforcement presence.
“Numerous agencies responded … to secure the safety of our community and residents as quickly as possible,” Robert Unruh said in a statement.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the fallen officer, the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office and all law enforcement,” Unruh wrote. “Our community was abruptly disturbed and exposed to an incident that greatly affected everyone in many ways and will continue to do so.”
On Sunday, blue ribbons hung from signs in a largely quiet downtown.
The Wisconsin Justice Department said the incident is being investigated by the Division of Criminal Investigation, with the help of neighboring law enforcement agencies, including the Wisconsin State Patrol, Wisconsin State Crime Lab and a DCI crime response specialist.
Agencies show support
The Sheriff’s Office and the deputy’s family received an outpouring of support.
Just before noon Sunday, nearly 200 prayers and condolences filled the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Facebook page, which features a black band on a sheriff’s badge.
Minneapolis police joined officers from Minnesota and Wisconsin overnight for a procession that escorted the deputy’s body to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office in St. Paul.
“Our deepest condolences to the family. The sacrifice will never be forgotten,” the Minneapolis Police Department posted on its own Facebook page.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with our St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office family dealing with the death of one of their deputies,” posted the Barron County, Wis., Sheriff’s Office on its own Facebook page.
Most recent deaths
In early April, two police officers were shot and killed in Barron County during a traffic stop in Cameron. Killed were officers Emily Breidenbach, 32, of the Chetek Police Department, and Hunter Scheel, 23, of the Cameron Police Department.
A western Minnesota sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed and two other law enforcement officers were injured while responding to a domestic dispute call April 15. Pope County Sheriff’s Deputy Joshua Owen died on his 44th birthday. The suspected shooter died when officers returned fire.
Star Tribune
Coloring book duo teams up again to highlight St. Paul’s Rondo history
Kosfeld used family photographs and old newspaper pictures as the basis for her illustrations. She also researched clothing of the period. It was important to her, she said, that her drawings “were respectful. No cartoons or caricatures.”
“Rondo,” Kosfeld said, “can be a heavy subject to some communities. But I wanted to show it was just beautiful. Playful.”
The project took nearly two years to complete from January 2023 to early 2024. Kosfeld and Kronick published the coloring book themselves. The Rondo book can be found at several shops and bookstores in St. Paul, including Next Chapter Books, Red Balloon, Wet Paint, Waldmann Brewery, Subtext Books, the Minnesota Historical Society gift shop and St. Paul Children’s Hospital.
Kosfeld is working on a third coloring book with a St. Paul focus, this one on the art, architecture and history of the St. Paul park system, to be published by the Ramsey County Historical Society.
Star Tribune
Harris goes to church while Trump muses about reporters being shot
LITITZ, Pa. — Kamala Harris told a Michigan church on Sunday that God offers America a ”divine plan strong enough to heal division,” while Donald Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot and labeled Democrats as ”demonic.”
The two major candidates took starkly different tones on the final Sunday of the campaign. Less than 48 hours before Election Day, Harris, the Democratic vice president, argued that Tuesday’s election offers voters the chance to reject ”chaos, fear and hate,” while Trump, the Republican former president, repeated lies about voter fraud to try to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and suggested that the country was falling apart without him in office.
Harris was concentrating her Sunday in Michigan, beginning the day with a few hundred parishioners at Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. It marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that Harris, who is Baptist, has spoken to a Black congregation, a reflection of how critical Black voters are across multiple battleground states.
”I see faith in action in remarkable ways,” she said in remarks that quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. ”I see a nation determined to turn the page on hate and division and chart a new way forward. As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states and so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice.”
She never mentioned Trump, though she’s certain to return to her more conventional partisan speech in stops later Sunday. But Harris did tell her friendly audience that ”there are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos.” The election and ”this moment in our nation,” she continued, ”has to be about so much more than partisan politics. It must be about the good work we can do together.”
Harris finished her remarks in about 11 minutes — starting and ending during Trump’s roughly 90-minute speech at a chilly outdoor rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, airport.
Trump usually veers from subject to subject, a discursive style he has labeled ”the weave.” But in Lancaster, he went on long tangents and hardly mentioned his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.
Instead, Trump relaunched criticisms of voting procedures across the nation and his own staff. He resurrected grievances about being prosecuted after trying to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, suggesting at one point that he ”shouldn’t have left” the White House.
Star Tribune
How votes get counted in Minnesota on Election Day
If that’s good, in many counties, election judges have a machine tabulate results, or count votes for candidates. In these counties, one copy of the tape the that machine prints in this process is taken to the central office. In most places, that is the county elections office. In others, the central office is the city elections office, which then reports to the county, Simon said.
Some precincts are close to the elections office, and some are far away, which explains some of the variation in when results show up.
But not every county tabulates at the precinct.
In Ramsey County, judges take the ballot counting machines from precincts to the county’s election office, Elections Manager David Triplett said. There, judges of different parties verify the machines’ seals, check the number of ballots against the number of voters that day, and if they add up, tabulate the votes.
“We have 100 receipts; we have 100 ballots. All right, go ahead and let’s report that result,” he said.
It is legal for precincts to transmit results to central offices online, but it’s rare, Simon said. And no devices used in the election can be connected to the internet while voting is in progress.
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