Star Tribune
Former Janesville, Minn., mayor identified as victim in Bloomington stabbing
Hennepin County officials have identified the 74-year-old man who died after being attacked at his home in Bloomington last week as Mark Novak.
Novak died of multiple sharp and blunt force injuries, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office.
His wife, Pamela Novak, 72, was also seriously injured in the attack early Thursday morning.
Novak served one term as the mayor of Janesville from 2011 to 2013. The Novaks moved to Bloomington shortly after his term ended, according to Janesville city administrator Clinton Rogers. Both had been active volunteers in the years they lived in Janesville, he said.
“Mark will be missed by many friends in our community,” Rogers said. “We hope for a speedy recovery for Pam.”
Police responded at 5 a.m. Thursday to a 911 caller asking for help and saying there was someone in the house, according to a news release from the Bloomington Police Department.
Police went to the caller’s home on 105th Street near Oak Grove Middle School, and discovered the woman on the floor inside the home just as a 44-year-old man was spotted running from the home. The suspect was arrested, and the second victim was also found inside the home. Both victims appeared to have been beaten and stabbed.
Both were taken by ambulance to HCMC, where Mark Novak was pronounced dead. Pamela Novak was in satisfactory condition Sunday evening, according to an HCMC spokesperson.
The suspect — whose relationship to the Novaks, if any, is unclear — was arrested on suspicion of murder Thursday morning and was in the Hennepin County jail as of Sunday. The Star Tribune generally does not identify suspects before they are charged. He does not appear to have a significant criminal history in Minnesota.
Police said they believe there is no danger to the public and that the incident was not random.
“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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