Star Tribune
Victim’s family objects to plea deal for fatal crash in Minneapolis
An unlicensed motorist admitted Wednesday that he was going at least 85 mph when he ran a red light, collided with another driver in a north Minneapolis intersection late last year and killed him.
Sylvester T. Vaughn, 40, of Minneapolis pleaded guilty in Hennepin County District Court to criminal vehicular homicide-gross negligence in connection with the crash that killed 22-year-old Josiah R. Oakley of Minneapolis on Dec. 11 at N. 42nd and Lyndale avenues.
The plea agreement between the prosecution and the defense calls for Vaughn to receive a four-year sentence, which falls within state sentencing guidelines. With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Vaughn is expected to serve slightly more than 21⁄3 years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
The plea deal also includes dismissal of a criminal vehicular homicide count alleging that he was drunk at the time of the crash. The criminal complaint said that Vaughn’s medical records from North Memorial Health, where he was treated for his injuries from the crash, showed that his blood alcohol content soon after the collision was 0.236% — nearly three times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 3, when Judge Carolina Lamas will decide whether to accept and impose the terms.
Vaughn was driving at the time despite his license having been revoked. His criminal history in Minnesota includes a conviction in 2019 for drunken driving. In that case, according to court records, he hit another vehicle from behind at a red light in Brooklyn Center. A preliminary breath test at the scene measured his blood alcohol content at 0.19%. A judge set aside a six-month jail sentence and put Vaughn on probation for two years.
The Oakley family learned weeks ago that the prosecution intended to offer Vaughn a four-year sentence. Oakley’s mother, Desiree Oakley, wrote on April 21 to the victim advocate assigned to her family by the County Attorney’s Office that Vaughn’s “reckless and dangerous behavior” robbed her of her only son, and his loved ones wanted the plea offer rescinded.
“We all strongly objected to this plea deal and didn’t understand why the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office was willing to offer any plea,” she wrote. “It is utterly absurd that the fact that he has endangered public safety by driving drunk and previously rear-ending someone [at a] stop light does not matter in this current case. … I feel it is my job as my son’s mother, but also a responsible member of the community, to protect the public from Mr. Vaughn.”
A statement from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office didn’t address the terms of the plea agreement. “Our thoughts are with Josiah’s family, friends and all who loved him,” spokesman Nicholas Kimball said. “His loss was a senseless and preventable tragedy that no family should have to experience.”
Oakley was a 2019 graduate of Minneapolis Edison High School, where he was on the chess team that won the Minneapolis Public Schools tournament in 2017. He finished second in the individual competition. Oakley also played football for Edison for two seasons, baseball for four seasons and was a member of the band.
According to the complaint against Vaughn:
Around 12:40 a.m., a police officer at Lyndale and 45th avenues spotted Vaughn’s Chevy SUV race by and then saw the immediate aftermath of the SUV’s collision with Oakley’s Pontiac SUV at 42nd Avenue. Emergency responders arrived and declared Oakley dead at the scene. The officer removed the injured Vaughn from his SUV before he was taken to North Memorial.
A State Patrol analysis determined that Vaughn was traveling 85 to 90 miles per hour when he entered the intersection through a red light and hit Oakley’s vehicle. The speed limit on that stretch of Lyndale is 30 mph.
Star Tribune
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza killed 15
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike on a school sheltering the displaced in northern Gaza on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including five children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who had gathered at the Abu Hussein school in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza where Israel has been waging a major air and ground operation for more than a week.
Fares Abu Hamza, head of the ministry’s emergency unit in northern Gaza, confirmed the toll and said dozens of people were wounded. He said the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was struggling to treat the casualties.
“Many women and children are in critical condition,” he said.
The Israeli military said it targeted a command center run by both militant groups inside the school. It provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. It was not immediately possible to verify the names.
Israel has repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza. The Israeli military says it carries out precise strikes on militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants triggered the war when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Some 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up a little more than half of the fatalities.
Twin Amur tigers born at Como Zoo in August now have names — Marisa and Maks.
Two long-time volunteers who have worked with zookeepers to care for and teach the public about the zoo’s big cats came up with the names, the first to be born at the St. Paul zoo in more than 40 years.
Marisa, a name that the volunteers found to mean “spirited and tenacious,” call that a perfect reflection of her personality. The name also carries special significance for the Como Zoo community, as it honors a retired zookeeper of the same name who was instrumental in the care of large cats during her 43 years at the zoo, Como Zoo and Conservatory Director Michelle Furrer said.
The male cub has been named Maks, which is associated with meanings like “the greatest” or “strength and leadership.” The volunteers felt this was an apt description of the male cub’s confident demeanor and growing sense of leadership, Furrer said.
“Marisa and Maks aren’t just names; they’re a fun reminder of the passion and care that keep us committed to protecting wildlife every day,” Furrer said.
The newborns and their first-time mother, 7-year-old Bernadette, remain off view to allow for more bonding time, zoo officials said. The cubs’ father, 11-year-old Tsar, has been a Como resident since February 2019 and remains on view.
Fewer than 500 Amur tigers — also known as Siberian tigers — remain in the wild as they face critical threats from habitat loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict, the zoo said.
Much of the wood waste in the metro area is sent to a processing site near Pig’s Eye Lake in St. Paul, where it is stored before being burned to produce energy at the St. Paul Cogeneration plant downtown.
Cogeneration provides power to about half of downtown and was originally built to manage elm-tree waste in response to Dutch elm disease. The plant burns approximately 240,000 tons of wood each year, according to Michael Auger, senior vice president of District Energy in St. Paul.
Jim Calkins, a certified landscape horticulturalist who has been involved in discussions about the problem, said he thinks using wood for energy is the most logical solution.
“The issue is, we don’t have enough facilities to be able to handle that, at least in the Twin Cities,” Calkins said. “So there has to be dollars to support transportation to get the wood to those places, or in some cases, to upgrade some of those facilities such that they are able to burn wood.”
Plans are in place to convert Koda Energy in Shakopee to burn ash wood, which could potentially handle around 40,000 tons of wood waste, but that would take around two years to establish, according to Klapperich.
In some areas of the state, cities have resorted to burning excess wood waste because they felt they had no other option. Open burning wood releases a lot of carbon into the air, Klapperich said.
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