Star Tribune
St. Cloud bar owner sentenced to nearly 6 years for insurance arson scheme
A former St. Cloud bar owner will serve nearly six years in prison for burning down his business more than two years ago and then trying to collect more than $1.4 million in insurance.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Eric C. Tostrud sentenced Andrew C. Welsh, 43, of St. Joseph, to 71 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release; Tostrud also ordered Welsh to pay $3.1 million in restitution.
In May, Welsh pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of arson for setting a basement desk on fire with gasoline in February 2020. After the fire, he filed an insurance claim for $1.43 million.
According to the county’s charges, Welsh bought the bar in 2016 with his wife for $850,000. At the time of the fire, he still owed $550,000 and faced several lawsuits from contractors who claimed he never paid them for their work.
In Welsh’s divorce a year before the fire, a judge ordered him to sell the bar and split the earnings with his wife; however, he never put the bar on the market.
An employee told investigators Welsh was alone in the bar just after 2 a.m. Feb. 17, 2020. Within the hour, police called to say the building was on fire, according to court documents. By the end of the week, a national team of specialty arson investigators were on scene and found chemical accelerants atop the basement desk.
A document signed by U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger asked the court to impose a sentence of 71 months due to Welsh causing “immense destruction and [putting] lives at risk by starting a catastrophic fire in the basement of his bar.”
In a court document submitted ahead of sentencing, Luger said the crime was motivated by greed.
“Although [Welsh] had financial troubles, he had legitimate means of dealing with them. He could have sold his bar and broken even. He could have surrendered the property back to the sellers on the contract for deed. He could have worked to renegotiate his debts. Failing all else, he could have declared bankruptcy,” Luger stated.
The fire was particularly dangerous, Luger said, because employees of neighboring businesses were still in the process of closing their establishments and at least two residents were present in apartments in the adjoining building at the time of the fire.
“Firefighters risked their lives, businesses lost millions, and a community was scarred due solely to [Welsh’s] greed,” Luger stated.
The lot where the bar once stood — a prominent corner along Fifth Avenue and St. Germain Street near the River’s Edge Convention Center — has been vacant since the fire. The city cleaned up the building’s remnants but a fenced-off lot with a charred wall from the adjacent building is still visible.
In June, the city’s Economic Development Authority authorized an agreement allowing the owners of the neighboring bar, Cowboy Jack’s, to apply for tax-increment financing to cover the costs of demolition and eventual reconstruction. The two buildings Cowboy’s Jacks inhabited, which date back to 1907 and 1910, were damaged by water and smoke. The owners of Cowboy Jack’s also purchased the former Press Bar site and plan to use the space in their redevelopment.
Star Tribune
On the Wisconsin-Iowa border, the Mississippi River is eroding sacred Indigenous mounds
Bear and other members of her tribe are serving as consultants on the project, as is William Quackenbush, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, and his tribe. They also lead teams of volunteers to help care for the mounds, which includes removing invasive European plants and replacing them with native plants that reduce soil erosion.
Some are skeptical of this manmade solution to a manmade problem. There are some tribal partners who’ve expressed that the river should be allowed to keep flowing as it wants to, Oberreuter said. Snow also acknowledged that people have been hesitant about making such a change to the natural bank.
But, she pointed out, “The bank is (already) no longer what it was.”
When the berm is complete, Snow said, there’ll be a trail atop it that visitors can walk. That may help protect the mounds better than the current way to see them, which is to walk among them, she said.
The Sny Magill Unit has been part of Effigy Mounds National Monument since 1962, Snow said, but it’s not advertised like the rest of the park. That’s in part because there are no staff stationed there to properly guide people through the mounds. But if people visit respectfully, she believes it’s one of the best places to take in the mounds because it’s on a flat, walkable surface, unlike the rest of the park, which is on a blufftop.
Priore criticized his opponents’ stance on TCAAP. “On the one hand, you have two candidates, Kurt Weber and me, with a forward-thinking, fresh perspective and strategic vision,” he said, arguing others want to defer and delay the city’s long-term needs.
Priore listed his other priorities for the city as public safety, and comprehensive planning for more and better trails.
The most recent campaign finance reports do not cover the fall and show little raising or spending for any candidate. Priore’s report indicates he received $600 from Fabel’s campaign fund.
David Radziej was appointed to the Arden Hills City Council in 2022, and has been involved with the city for more than a decade through work on its Economic Development and Finance councils, as well as TCAAP planning groups. He lost a reelection bid in 2022.
In an interview, Radziej raised concerns that the new density limit for TCAAP is out of character for Arden Hills and said he fears adding housing units at the expense of commercial development will harm the city’s tax base.
“I’d like it to be developed. I’d like to hold harmless the current taxpayers,” he said in an interview.
Two months after getting a ticket for being on her phone while driving, a woman was on her phone again when struck a motorcyclist at an Anoka county intersection and killed him, according to a newly filed search warrant affidavit.
The crash occurred on Oct. 5 in Oak Grove at the intersection of Viking and Lake George boulevards NW., the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office said.
The Sheriff’s Office identified the motorcyclist who died at the scene as Kelly Matthew Linder, 49, of Albert Lea, Minn., and the SUV driver as Jessica Marie Pietrzak, 31, of St. Francis. Court records show that Pietrzak was ticketed in August by a St. Francis police officer for driving while on her phone.
According to state Department of Public Safety statistics, distracted driving was a factor in 132 traffic deaths in Minnesota from 2019 through 2023.
Linder was stopped shortly before noon on eastbound Viking Boulevard and waiting to turn left onto Lake George Boulevard when Pietrzak hit the motorcycle from behind, the Sheriff’s Office said.
A search warrant affidavit this week from the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office disclosed that a witness who stopped to help Pietrzak after the crash told law enforcement that Pietrzak said “she was not paying attention and had been on her phone.”
Then as more people stopped to help, Pietrzak “began telling people that the sun was in her eyes, and she did not see the motorcycle,” read the filing, which led to the court allowing investigators to collect data from her cellphone.
The filing pointed out that the sun at that time of the day was not in a position for it to affect her vision. Also, the filing continued, Pietrzak’s entire front windshield has a dark tint. She’s been ticketed twice for that dark windshield in recent years, according to court records.
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