Star Tribune
4-year-old Eli is back home recovering after nearly drowning in Minneapolis pond
Eli Steinbach, age 4, is home again with his mom and dad and four siblings after nearly drowning four weeks ago when he fell through the ice while exploring a pond near his Minneapolis home.
Eli had been underwater for about five minutes when a Minneapolis police officer charged into waist-deep water to pull him out, said his mother, Caitlyn Shields. Rescuers performed CPR on him for 30 minutes before his heart restarted.
Doctors and nurses at HCMC eased Eli’s recovery as he started eating and talking again, Shields said.
“It was terrifying,” she said, recalling the moment she looked out the living room window and saw her son’s bright green jacket lying on the pond’s thin ice. She realized immediately what had happened and called 911.
Eli, a high-functioning autistic child, had slipped out of the house before, and the family had recently installed new locks at their home in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood. Shields said she put him down for a nap on Nov. 26 along with his 2-year-old brother, Remi, before going to another room to change baby Daniel’s diaper.
A few minutes later, Shields said, she realized the house felt too quiet. Eli and Remi had snuck out and quickly made their way across the street to Bryn Mawr Meadows Park, where earlier this year the city installed two stormwater retention ponds near the intersection of Laurel and Morgan avenues. The ponds sit just across the street from the family’s home.
After Shields called 911, she raced to the pond.
“My heart just sunk,” she said. “You see this big hole in the ice. I knew that’s where he was, but … I kept calling out his name because he hides sometimes.”
Remi, still on the ice, was coaxed back to shore by his 6-year-old sister, Penelope, who stayed calm so he wouldn’t get excited and break through the ice, Shields said.
Minneapolis police officers quickly arrived and drove across the grass to the pond’s edge, Shields said. An officer then plunged into the pond, crashing through the thin ice to get to Eli and pull him out.
A firefighter kept chest compressions going for up to 30 minutes before Eli’s heart restarted, Shields said. She’s still hoping to learn the names of everyone involved in the rescue of her son.
Eli’s recovery at HCMC was no less dramatic. He required a ventilator and was put into a medically induced coma when he arrived, then spent weeks returning to his usual self. He sometimes has seizures, but doctors have told Shields they’re related to the traumatic brain injury he suffered.
When he resumed drinking liquids, he graduated to eating solid foods the same day. He continues to receive physical, speech and occupational therapy, said Shields, who praised the staff at HCMC.
“We found out he’s a complete anomaly,” she said, “to have memory, to be walking, talking and functioning as well as he is. He’s been doing really well.”
There is an online fundraiser to help with mounting medical costs that were made less bearable when Shields stopped working to care for Eli. They’re also dealing with a major water-pipe break at home that flooded their basement, destroying several items of value.
“We had to be at the hospital nonstop,” Shields said. “Plus, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
She said she doesn’t know why the ponds weren’t enclosed by fencing, but the family has retained a lawyer. While a Minneapolis police officer often gets stationed near the ponds to keep people away, she said she’s twice seen people go out on the ponds attempting to ice skate.
Eli, meanwhile, is back at home enjoying his trucks and dinosaurs. He’s a big fan of Blippi and Bluey on YouTube, and is mostly just “an exuberant boy,” his mother said.
Shields said she and her husband, Joe Steinbach, have the kids all back together again now that Eli has returned from the hospital.
“I’m really glad it has had the outcome that it has had, for sure,” she said, “that I got to celebrate Christmas with all five of my kids, instead of mourning.”
Star Tribune staff writer Faiza Mahamud contributed to this story.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
