Star Tribune
No charges to be filed in St. Paul police killing of 65-year-old man holding a knife
More than a year after the death of a St. Paul man at the hands of police, prosecutors have decided not to file charges against the officer who shot and killed 65-year-old Yia Xiong as he was wielding a knife.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said they determined that St. Paul officer Abdirahmin Dahir was justified in using deadly force against Xiong.
“Anytime deadly force is used by the government, it is a tragedy for all those involved, and it requires prosecutors to seek the truth without bias, fear, or favor and do the right thing,” Choi wrote.
He added that he is “deeply saddened that this legal decision may deepen the pain for Mr. Yia Xiong’s family and community members who wanted something different.”
Multiple protests and vigils have been held over the past year to demand charges in the killing. Hmong community members and several organizations expressed outrage over the shooting and said Xiong’s death could have been avoided.
Snowdon Herr, head of the group Justice for Yia Xiong, said he and others in the Hmong community were “devastated” by the decision not to charge the officer.
“It’s totally unjustifiable and it’s the darkest day for all of us, especially Yia Xiong’s family,” said Herr.
The decision follows an investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a review of the case by the Attorney General’s and County Attorney’s offices, and an analysis by use-of-force expert Jeff Noble.
Police were called on Feb. 11, 2023 to an apartment building on a report of a man with a knife. A 911 caller said Xiong entered a toddler’s private birthday party in the complex and offered money to children before being asked to leave, according to a 39-page memorandum released Wednesday. The caller said Xiong later returned with a knife and threatened the caller’s adult son.
Police body camera footage shows officers entering the complex, with one person yelling “Please, hurry.” The officers followed Xiong as he entered his apartment, closing the door behind him. Officer Noushue Cha pushed the door open to find Xiong walking into the hallway holding a 2-inch-long knife. Dahir then fired his gun and Cha deployed his Taser.
Noble wrote in his report that he believed the officers’ lives were in “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury” when Xiong was shot. Noble added that he believed it reasonable for the officers to push into Xiong’s apartment given the circumstances and to “ensure that no one was at risk of harm.”
Herr and others angered by Xiong’s death, however, said they believed the police agitated Xiong by pushing open the apartment door, leading to him coming out armed.
“He went into the safest place on Earth, his apartment, and hoped that things will get calmed down,” Herr said. “Instead they kicked his door, scared him out, and provoked the situation before they shot him dead.”
Activists and family members have said they believe Xiong’s hearing loss and inability to understand English factored into his death. Herr said police should have reached out to a bilingual Hmong speaker to help de-escalate the situation. “Call a Hmong community leader like me for us to come out and negotiate instead of shooting him to death,” he said.
However, one of the adults at the birthday party said Xiong was able to respond to her questions in English, according to the memorandum.
Ellison wrote that the decision on whether to charge “must be based on what the law requires, and it is a responsibility we take with the greatest seriousness even as we hold the victim and his family in our hearts and minds.”
ZUMBRO RIVER VALLEY, MINN. – From his combine on an October afternoon, harvesting dried-out soybeans the color of dust, Martin Larsen points to a hillside where his ancestors from Scandinavia homesteaded.
History might be happening again on the Larsen farm.
Last year, on this plot of land along the Zumbro River, the 43-year-old farmer from Byron grew oats. Not oats for hogs or cows. But oats for humans. He hauled the oats to a miller across the state line into Iowa. A previous year, Larsen even had a contract with Oatly, the trendy Swedish maker of milk alternatives.
Something of an oat renaissance has been occurring down in the fields west of the Mississippi River. During winters, Larsen — through his job with the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District — evangelized to fellow farmers on the humble small grain.
His friends and neighbors were listening. As of this fall, over 60 farmers, covering 6,000 acres across southern Minnesota, have joined Larsen’s informal coalition to grow food-grade oats. They call themselves the “oat mafia.”
Star of breakfast food, children’s books and, increasingly, those nondairy lattes, oats are easier on the environment, requiring less nitrogen than corn, which means a lot in the karst-rich hill country of southeastern Minnesota, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tasked state officials with cleaning up drinking water.
“Nitrates come from this,” said Larsen, driving his gray Gleaner combine on a patch of soybeans beneath a hillock just beyond the suburban sprawl of northwest Rochester on a recent warm Friday afternoon. “I’m not going to beat around the bush anymore. That’s what the data says.”
But as the oat mafia looks to the future, they’re struggling with a basic marketing question: Who will actually buy these oats they’re growing?
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
