Star Tribune
St. Paul man shot romantic rival following escalating feud
A St. Paul man is charged with murder for his alleged role in a shooting that was the culmination of an escalating feud with his girlfriend’s estranged husband.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged James Edward Hagen, 32, with second-degree murder Wednesday. Prosecutors believe Hagen shot and killed Jonathan Diaz, 35, of St. Paul who was found in lying in a yard in the 800 block of York Avenue with multiple gunshot wounds on the evening of July 1. Hagen’s next court hearing is Friday.
According to charging documents, fights between Hagen and Diaz escalated months before the shooting.
Officers first responded in August 2023 to the same address in the 800 block of York Avenue for reports of a shooting. They found Hagen with bullet wounds to both legs, but he denied knowing who the shooter was or why they fired at him. But Hagen’s girlfriend, referred to as “CD”, said Diaz shot Hagen out of jealousy.
CD later explained that she is married to Diaz, although they separated four years ago. She has dated Hagen for the past three years, and said that he and Diaz “don’t get along.”
Diaz was arrested the day after that shooting. He wasn’t charged because Hagen did not cooperate and prosecutors could not prove a case against Diaz without a reasonable doubt.
Police responded to another shooting at that home on July 1. There they found CD performing CPR on Diaz, who was lying near a garage door in a pool of blood. Diaz was unconscious. He had no pulse and stopped breathing. Officers helped Diaz until medics arrived, but they pronounced him dead at the scene.
Witnesses said Hagen shot Diaz and fled on a bicycle before ditching it to run on foot. Witnesses also said a white Cadillac circled the area after the shooting.
Investigators canvassed the scene and found nine bullet casings — seven inside the garage and two outside. A 9mm handgun with an empty magazine was also found in the garage, and examination suggests it fired the bullet casings recovered from the scene.
A woman referred to as “KA” said she was friends with Diaz, and claimed to be with him moments before the shooting. KA said she and Diaz drove past the York Avenue home earlier that day, and Diaz greeted his son who was outside the home. Diaz picked up KA in a white Cadillac later, returning to the York Avenue home where he asked KA to drop him off. She said gunshots rang as she drove away.
“KA tried to call [Diaz] to see if he’s okay, and she eventually left the area in the white Cadillac,” the charging documents read. “After the shooting, KA saw a white male with facial hair running in the neighborhood and looking behind him as if someone was chasing him.”
CD’s teenage daughter said she saw the incident, but did not want to get her mother in trouble because she believed the mother was not honest about the shooting. When interviewed at police headquarters, away from her mother, CD’s daughter said had Diaz shot Hagen at the same home before — and that Hagen threatened to kill Diaz the next time he saw him.
The daughter claimed to be in the kitchen with CD when they heard 10 loud bangs. Running outside, she said Hagen stood in the garage doorway near Diaz. Diaz was on the ground and shaking. The daughter thought Hagen shot Diaz, and said CD ran towards Diaz as Hagen yelled “I told you I was going to kill him!” She said Hagen fled on a bike afterwards, but was unsure if he took a gun with him. She believes Diaz was unarmed.
Police also interviewed CD’s teenage son, who heard the pops as he cleaned the bathroom. He heard his mother screaming outside, said he ran outside to see Hagen panic and leave on a bike.
When interviewed by police, CD said Hagen and Diaz don’t get along. She said Diaz drives past her York Avenue home to see his son, but Hagen found out and began arguing with her. She said Hagen left after they argued, and she heard bangs outside sometime later. CD said she went outside and found Diaz dying on the ground, but denied seeing Hagen there.
Police arrested Hagen during a July 2 traffic stop. An autopsy by the Ramsey County Medical Examiner found Diaz died from six gunshot wounds to his body. He marked the 14th homicide this year. According to a Star Tribune database, there were 18 by this time last year.
Thousands of Minnesotans have received some form of student debt relief in the past four years, even as President Joe Biden’s plans for wider loan forgiveness remain stalled following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year.
The U.S. Department of Education had approved nearly 45,000 Minnesotans for some form of relief worth a combined $2 billion, as of this spring. Some of those payments were issued as the department updated longstanding programs that forgive loans for people who have disabilities or work in government or nonprofit jobs. Others were OK’d under new programs designed to better tailor people’s repayment plans toward their income levels.
“When I talk to people, I always like to encourage them to just look at their student loan situation and plan for the here and now,” said Kim Miller, senior program manager for LSS Financial Counseling. “We can’t predict what the future will bring.”
The issue continues to be a political talking point as the leading presidential candidates make competing pitches ahead of the November election and courts sort through legal challenges brought by Republican-leaning organizations challenging the validity of some of the Biden administration’s student debt programs.
Biden, a Democrat, has promised to continue working on new proposals, saying crushing debt is delaying too many people’s dreams and harming too many local economies. Former President Donald Trump, a Republican, has derided student debt forgiveness and in one recent rally accused the Biden administration of “throwing money out the window.”
People who have been through the loan forgiveness process say it could be far smoother.
Daniel Lauer-Schumacher, who graduated in 2007 from St. John’s University, has spent his entire career working for government and nonprofit agencies, often in jobs that help people get housing. He applied three times for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, each time compiling a mountain of paperwork that showed he had been making payments for a decade on his $42,000 in student loans.
The first two times, he was rejected. On the third attempt, he learned that he’d be getting $3,000 back that he had overpaid — and that he should have been approved earlier.
The program was created in 2007, but the Biden administration made changes that allowed some people to receive credit for loan payments that previously wouldn’t have counted. Lauer-Schumacher gets frustrated when people describe it as though it were a magical handout.
“I qualified for this thing,” he said. “I followed all the rules.”
Tonja Trickel doesn’t have any issue with programs that help people who work in public service. The physical therapist had about $5,000 of her roughly $80,000 in debt knocked off through a similar program.
But the Illinois resident, who grew up in Minnesota, gets frustrated with broader student debt forgiveness programs. She spent about 20 years working to pay off her own loans.
“Now, I feel like we’re being asked to pay over again” for other people, she said.
If she’d been able to keep that money, she might have a different house. She might have more money in a retirement account. She said some of her friends decided not to go to college because they wanted to avoid the debt and now question that decision.
Public opinion surveys suggest Trickel’s not alone in questioning the student debt relief.
Just three out of 10 U.S. adults said they approved of Biden’s handling of student debt issues, while four out of 10 disapproved, according to a poll conducted earlier this year by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll also found a sharp partisan divide, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say the government should prioritize student debt issues.
Jim Turchi, who went to the University of Minnesota’s Duluth campus, has been working in manufacturing for 30 years and is struggling to find people for jobs that come with six-figure salaries. He sees some of the loan forgiveness proposals as politicians’ efforts to say, “Hey, we’ll pay for your education. Just keep us in power.”
Turchi said he believes a college education needs to come with a return on the investment, and he worries that the focus on loan forgiveness is distracting from another issue that needs to be solved: “I think education’s important, but I think we really need to address the question of why is college so expensive.”
A budding partnership led by deputies in the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office aims to prevent crime among the area’s Karen youth, the latest effort to provide support and deterrence for teens found particularly susceptible to drugs and gang violence.
Law enforcement officials and the Karen Organization of Minnesota launched the joint effort after a March brainstorm session about gangs, resource sharing and summer activities to help at-risk youth in the Karen community.
Pronounced Kuh-ren, the ethnic group is native to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
The March meeting was personal for sheriff’s deputy Kaw Ku, who came to Minnesota in 2019 after immigrating to Arizona nine years earlier. He was 17 when he arrived in the U.S. and struggled to learn English, make friends and cope with bullying. Now as a deputy, Ku said, he wants to give to the Karen community by serving as a role model.
“Coming to another country, and [with] how you look, sometimes people see those things and make you feel like you do not belong,” Ku said. “I want to do something to lead by example, making a difference, and to help the youth. Because the youth are the future. They are the leaders for the community.”
An estimated 20,000 Karen live in Minnesota, mostly in St. Paul. The state’s Karen population is the largest in the U.S. Many came to the country to escape war and persecution in their homeland, where reports of Karen being subjected to forced labor, rape and death persist.
Their families found opportunity in Minnesota, but gangs and drugs have plagued many of their youth. As the Star Tribune has reported, authorities and advocates have found that historical trauma and a lack of resources have left Karen children vulnerable to their influence. Some allegedly were even forced to use drugs at gunpoint.
Many Karen parents who escaped persecution in Myanmar have reported extreme depression because they don’t know how to help their kids.
St. Paul police said an alarming rate of methamphetamine and fentanyl addiction fueled violence among Karen gangs last year. They say a suspected gang member was shot in the ankle last June as he walked by his home. In another incident, more than a dozen bullets peppered the house of a Karen youth whom police believe was associated with a gang. When the home was struck again months later, two stray bullets hit a neighbor’s house. No one was hurt.
St. Paul’s Humboldt High School, which has the highest percentage of Karen youth in the city’s school district, stemmed the tide of gang and drug influence through a partnership with police, the Karen Organization and the nonprofit Urban Village. That partnership reportedly has shown progress, bringing opportunity and community to troubled Karen youth, but advocates say more support is needed.
And deputies at the Sheriff’s Office say helping Karen people could help everyone.
Deputy Daryl Gullette helps to direct the Youth Plus Program, a grant-funded program at the Sheriff’s Office that serves mostly Karen, Karenni and Somali youth. He organizes fishing trips, homework assistance and other activities to help participants interact with each other.
Gullette said the program helps build relationships among young people from different cultures. As a St. Paul native and former school resource officer, he said such work is important in building a strong community.
“Empowering the Karen and Karenni community — it benefits us all. It gives us a different view into their struggles and to open up understanding,” Gullette said. “We’ve all had problems. It’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to offer help … it’s [about] how do we reach success together?”
More than two dozen people were arrested at midnight Friday in Minneapolis as groups of young adults in Dinkytown began shooting fireworks at police officers, civilians and their cars following July 4th celebrations, although no one was seriously injured in a night that saw fewer melees and less gun violence than previous years.
From midnight to 3 a.m., Minneapolis police arrested 30 people, seized dozens of illegal fireworks and issued five citations. Most will be charged with felony rioting, but those who deliberately targeted people will be charged with felony assault, said Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. That number is likely to increase as other agencies dispatched across the city finalize reports.
“We understand it’s the 4th of July, some people are going to shoot off fireworks,” O’Hara said. “We’re most concerned about this really, really dangerous — and just stupid – behavior of shooting them at people.”
Of those arrested, 27 were adults and eight were juveniles; ages ranged from 15 to 23. According to police, 28 were not from Minneapolis, and five of them carried out-of-state licenses from Kansas, Massachusetts and Maine.
“It’s dangerous to the people that are coming, the kids that are coming to watch this stuff — it’s dangerous for everyone,” O’Hara said. “It’s ridiculous that our residents and other people visiting our town have to deal with this egregious behavior.”
Police say much of the crowds can be traced to social media “pop-up” invitations, posts encouraging people to come to Minneapolis and cause disturbances.
Unlike in previous years, police saw no gun violence. There were four shootings on July 4th last year, along with multiple disturbances throughout the city, and seven people were shot on Boom Island in 2022.
“It’s not as bad as last year and the problems we’ve been seeing are over here in Dinkytown on the east side of the river,” O’Hara said.
In preparation for potential violence on July 4th, police ramped up security efforts and closed down roads. The department deployed an additional 200 officers this year, and were aided by 50 Minnesota State Patrol troopers, Minneapolis Parks Police and University of Minnesota Police. Police say an increased presence will continue over the weekend for Taste of Minnesota.
