Star Tribune
Man who torched St. Paul mosque planned to burn other houses of worship
Prosecutors have charged a 42-year-old man with arson two days after a fire inside a St. Paul mosque caused $250,000 in damages and marked the sixth time such houses of worship have been targeted this year.
Said Murekezi faces charges of second-degree arson, second-degree burglary and possession of methamphetamine in connection with a May 17 blaze at St. Paul’s Oromo American Tawhid Islamic Center. Prosecutors asked Murekezi’s bail be set at $200,000, and say there was no evidence connecting the incident to a crime of bias.
“We welcome any arrest in this situation because our community [learned] from the previous incidents that we really need to act quickly to make sure that the suspect in this case is not going to other mosques,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN).
According to the charges, the center has been used as mosque office space since 2021. Three weeks ago the building was vandalized by someone who broke one of the windows, and staff had not used the building since. A bus driver for the Head Start School, located next to the center, saw somebody throw something through one of the mosque windows a day before the fire.
Murekezi told ATF agents after his arrest that he broke into the building the day before to stay overnight and look for things to burn. He admitted to investigators that he started the mosque fire, adding that he ensured nobody was in the building and that what he did was “fun.”
The arson was a form of protest for Murekezi, according to charging documents.
He identified as Muslim, and said he burned the building in protest for other Muslims and Americans who must sleep outside in the cold.
“He said that the building is not serving anyone, but the people need it,” the documents read. “Murekezi stated it was a good thing he was caught, because if he was not caught, he would ‘torch another one’ or ‘a church.'”
According to interviews with Murekezi, his plans were specific. He planned to burn the Islamic Dawah Center in St. Paul as well as an unknown mosque in Mankato, saying he goes to those mosques often to rob money from their donation boxes.
Murekezi’s plans to “bring about change” went further. He told investigators that he hates terrorism but is becoming a terrorist.
“He stated people may get hurt or killed with these ideas, and that it would be messed up,” the charging documents continued.
Murekezi’s first court appearance is set for this afternoon. His criminal history dates back years.
Officials say Murekezi was charged with arson in 2020 for allegedly setting fire to a pile of clothes in his apartment. He barred firefighters from entering the room, and threatened to jump out of the fourth-floor window before he was taken into custody. At the time, he agreed to be taken to the hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Murekezi was also arrested in 2020 for threatening his neighbors with a knife, accusing them of being too loud and saying that he would “hurt them” if the noise continued. He was arrested and pled guilty to threats of violence, earning him a year-long sentence that was postponed. The case was dismissed and Murekezi was discharged two years later because he had served time for the sentence by then.
Charging documents say that Murekezi also broke windows at an Islamic community center in Minnetonka in 2021 and at a Catholic church in Minneapolis in 2023. He was in the Hennepin county jail between April 28 and May 15 of this year, and was on probation for criminal damage to property when police arrested him Wednesday.
The fire he allegedly set at the Oromo American Tawhid Islamic Center this week set Minnesotan Muslims on edge, and marked the sixth such incident at a mosque this year, including arson and attempted arson and broken doors and windows at mosques in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Hussein said he and others met with Governor Tim Walz staff on Thursday to request at least $7.5 million in emergency funding for mosques, synagogues and places of worship. Those funds could help secure at least 150 houses of worship, not including mosques, with gear such as surveillance cameras and lighting.
Staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this report.
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
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