Star Tribune
Kristy Hanson gets six years for aiding the stabbing of her alleged rapist in New Hope
An 18-year-old Plymouth woman received a six-year prison sentence for aiding and abetting the nonfatal stabbing of her alleged rapist last summer at the hands of her boyfriend who wanted “justice.”
Kristy Marie Hanson was initially charged in Hennepin County District Court with aiding attempted first-degree murder. But in exchange of her guilty plea, the charge was dismissed and reduced to aiding first-degree assault. She entered the plea in December with the understanding that Judge Jean Burdorf could have imposed a maximum sentence of 20 years.
But on Tuesday, Burdorf ordered a minimum sentence at the Shakopee women’s prison. Hanson will serve about two years of that on supervised released and she has credit for serving more than seven months in jail.
Hanson didn’t stab the man, but she confessed to helping then-boyfriend Chong Vang, 22 of St. Paul, after the stabbing. The couple saw the victim in a grocery store July 26 ? two weeks after Hanson’s 18th birthday ? and Vang followed him to Civic Center Park in New Hope where he repeatedly stabbed him.
Vang is set to stand trial in April and has pleaded not guilty to first-degree attempted murder. Hanson is on the witness list.
Her private defense attorney Jessica Rugani, a former prosecutor, said in a phone interview Wednesday that, had the stabbing taken place weeks earlier, Hanson would not be facing prison time in juvenile court. Rugani said Hanson was easily manipulated and in a physically abusive relationship with Vang, who forced her to read hours of religious doctrine on the superiority of men and subjugation of women.
Hanson told Vang about the rape allegation, Rugani said, and Vang was the mastermind of the attack, “completely done at his desire for vengeance.”
Rugani said in initial conversations with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, prosecutors told her that Hanson “isn’t a person who should go to prison.” But in front of the judge, that tone changed, and prison is exactly where Hanson ended up.
“I don’t think she ever reported the rape before the attack… So many women in our society don’t,” Rugani said.
New Hope Police Supervisor Jeana Allen-Hatcher said in a phone interview that when Hanson talked to the investigator, she mentioned being groped and “something happening over at Hy-Vee.” Allen-Hatcher said that Hanson didn’t provide names “and she never called police” to report a sexual assault.
According to the criminal complaint, Hanson told Vang that she had been sexually assaulted by at least five men and she provided all their names. The Star Tribune requested a police report detailing the investigation into the allegations, but Allen-Hatcher said she can’t provide the report until Vang goes through the court process.
“The victim was asked [about the alleged rape], and he said he didn’t do anything and he had not idea what we were talking about,” Allen-Hatcher said.
Rugani said she doesn’t believe the alleged rape was ever investigated. Instead, it was “used as motivation instead of looking at is as a mitigation.” She added that the victim appeared in court to object to Hanson’s plea deal, saying she was just as guilty as Vang and should receive equal punishment.
She said Hanson confessed to her role and agreed to the sentence because the defense “felt we didn’t have a choice” because of the high bar to prove Hanson was under duress or to argue battered woman syndrome at trial.
“She played a role after the fact because she was scared and totally surprised and told the police that,” Rugani said.
According to the charges:
Officers were waved down by several bystanders. The victim was covered in blood from stab wounds to his neck and chest. Doctors treated 10 lacerations and puncture wounds. He also suffered two punctured lungs.
Witnesses told police they ran to the park’s pavilion and saw Vang with a knife on top of the victim. Vang kept saying that the man was a rapist. Bystanders tried to get Vang to stop and drop the knife.
Surveillance video from Hy-Vee showed Vang walking through the store searching for something or someone. As the the man buys a soda, Hanson is shown taking a photo of the man who leaves the store and walks to the park. Vang followed him.
Vang made small talk with the man as he sat in the pavilion. He stood up, shook the victim’s hand, and appeared to hug him before stabbing him in the neck. He continued stabbing after the man fell to the ground.
Hanson told police she had been dating Vang for 10 months and Vang told her that he would get justice for her and kill the men if he found them. She said they went to Hy-Vee looking for one of the alleged rapists. She said she knew Vang brought a knife.
She took the photo of the victim in the store and sent it to Vang. Hanson went back to the car, knowing she couldn’t be seen with Vang, and drove to the park where she saw Vang running, covered in blood.
Hanson drove Vang to a YCMA and helped clean off the blood. Then they went to Target to buy new clothes. They went back to her house, where police found them. There, officers read in Hanson’s journal entry from July 26: “Justice was served.”
Messages were left with Vang’s public defenders.
Star Tribune
Biden calls out Musk over a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked in the US illegally
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk for hypocrisy on immigration after a published report that the Tesla CEO once worked illegally in the United States. The South Africa-born Musk denies the allegation.
”That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?” Biden said while campaigning on Saturday in Pittsburgh at a union hall.
The Washington Post reported that Musk worked illegally in the country while on a student visa. The newspaper, citing company documents, former business associates and court documents, said Musk arrived in Palo Alto, California in 1995 for a graduate program at Stanford University “but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his startup. ”
Musk wrote on X in reply to a video post of Biden’s comments: ”I was in fact allowed to work in the US.” Musk added, ”The Biden puppet is lying.”
Investors in Musk’s company, Zip2, were concerned about the possibility of their founder being deported, according to the report, and gave him a deadline for obtaining a work visa. The newspaper also cited a 2005 email from Musk to his Tesla co-founders acknowledging that he did not have authorization to be in the U.S. when he started Zip2.
According to the account, that email was submitted as evidence in a now-closed California defamation lawsuit and said that Musk had apllied to Stanford so he could stay in the country legally.
Musk is today the world’s richest man. He has committed more than $70 million to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP candidates win on Nov. 5, and is one of the party’s biggest donors this campaign season. He has been headlining events in the White House race’s final stretch, often echoing Trump’s dark rhetoric against immigration.
Trump has pledged to give Musk a role in his administration if he wins next month.
The only debate between DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and GOP challenger Royce White started Sunday on the street outside WCCO Radio.
As White approached the building, he loudly called some two dozen flag-waving and cheering Klobuchar supporters a “whole lot of commies.” The 33-year-old provocateur and podcaster also told them to thank Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney — who endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris — because there was “no chance in hell” that Harris would defeat Republican former President Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
Klobuchar, 64, had arrived moments earlier, smiling and wishing “good morning” to her supporters. Once inside, the two took questions for an hour from moderator Blois Olson. Their tone was generally polite with White often interrupting a Klobuchar response with, “rebuttal,” indicated he wanted to respond.
The senator repeatedly raised White’s claims on X, formerly Twitter, that “The bad guys won in World War II” and that there were “no good guys in that war.” She called that stance offensive to veterans.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrives at WCCO Radio for a debate with Royce White in Minneapolis on Sunday, Oct. 27. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii)
Klobuchar, who is seeking a fourth six-year term, portrayed herself as a pragmatist. She opened by saying that we live in “incredibly divisive times politically” but that she has listened and worked with Republicans to bring down shipping costs, drug prices for seniors and to help veterans and push for more housing and child care.
“Courage in this next few years is not going to be standing by yourself yelling at people,” she said, her opening allusion to White’s rhetoric, which she said is often vulgar.
White, a former NBA player, is a political novice, but a close ally of Steve Bannon, the jailed former chief strategist for Trump and right wing media executive. Last summer, White won the state GOP endorsement to run against Klobuchar.
“Our country’s coming undone at the seams. I think we can change that,” White said in his opening statement. He said he threatens the status quo, decried the “permanent political class” and referred to the two major parties as the “uniparty.”
Other buildings destroyed at Khojir and Parchin likely included buildings where Iran used industrial mixers to create the solid fuel needed for its extensive ballistic missile arsenal, Eveleth said.
In a statement issued immediately after the attack Saturday, the Israeli military said it targeted ”missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year.”
Destroying such sites could greatly disrupt Iran’s ability to manufacture new ballistic missiles to replenish its arsenal after the two attacks on Israel. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which oversees the country’s ballistic missile program, has been silent since Saturday’s attack.
Iran’s overall ballistic missile arsenal, which includes shorter-range missiles unable to reach Israel, was estimated to be ”over 3,000” by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, then-commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2022. In the time since, Iran has fired hundreds of the missiles in a series of attacks.
There have been no videos or photos posted to social media of missile parts or damage in civilian neighborhoods following the recent attack — suggesting that the Israeli strikes were far more accurate that Iran’s ballistic missile barrages targeting Israel in April and October. Israel relied on aircraft-fired missiles during its attack.
However, one factory appeared to have been hit in Shamsabad Industrial City, just south of Tehran near Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main gateway to the outside world. Online videos of the damaged building corresponded to an address for a firm known as TIECO, which advertises itself as building advanced machinery used in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
