Star Tribune
Armed robbers tie up couple in Golden Valley home, steal 8 pricy puppies, other valuables
Masked armed robbers hit a home in Golden Valley, tied up and gagged residents before making off with jewels, a sports car, eight high-priced purebred puppies and other valuables, officials said.
Police said they believe the crooks had inside help in pulling off the job late Saturday at the home in the 6300 block of Medicine Lake Road.
“This was an isolated incident, and we know based upon our initial investigation and talking with the victims these suspects had help from a family member,” Police Chief Virgil Green said in a statement. “They knew exactly what they were looking for when they entered the home.”
Green elaborated in an interview Wednesday that the relative is a nephew who immediately drew suspicion “when he showed up when he did.”
Once one of the residents opened the door, “that’s when the other three were let in the home,” the chief added.
While no arrests have been made as of Wednesday afternoon, Green continued, “we are confident the information we have about the suspects will lead to the arrest of those involved.”
The occupants of the home reported to police that at least three suspects wearing ski masks and carrying guns forced them into the kitchen and bound their hands, legs and mouths with duct tape.
Police say the suspects stole jewelry, gaming systems, designer purses and eight American Bully Merle puppies — three males and five females — valued at $5,000 to $10,000 each. The suspects also stole a 2019 Dodge Challenger, which was recovered Tuesday in Minneapolis, the chief said.
Green said the haul added up to more than $100,000 worth of valuables.
“They definitely used force trying to get [the residents] to open up a safe, and if they didn’t open it up, they would kill them,” the chief said.
A longtime friend of one of the residents elaborated that the intruders held guns to the victims’ head for 25 minutes while they gathered up the six-week-old puppies and some of the couple’s other possessions.
“Imagine being held in your home against your will [and] not knowing if your about to die or not,” Teshown Morris wrote on an online fundraising campaign whose mission is to help the couple recover financially. “They aren’t physically harmed [but] emotionally, mentally they are struggling to wrap their heads around this.”
Jessica Lee, who co-owns the puppies and has been in touch with her business partner since the robbery, said the suspects hauled the dogs away in a big plastic tote.
The puppies have yet to visit a veterinarian, are not vaccinated, “and they’re too young to leave their mom or even leave their house,” Lee said. “They are at super high risk for illness.”
Their mother was left behind and is in physical distress because she is not nursing, Lee said. “She’s very, very upset.”
A breeder in Anoka County who knows the couple and has been in contact with them said that “one of the four is still contacting [the couple] and threatening their lives.”
Joanna Kelly, who breeds American Bully Merle dogs, questions whether the thieves will be able to sell them.
“Anybody who does something like that doesn’t know a whole lot about dogs and pedigrees,” Kelly said, who runs her breeding operation from her Minneapolis home.
Kelly said it would be difficult to sell the puppies because “you need a breeding certificate if you want to sell one of these dogs. … They would have to falsify documents.”
American Bully Merle dogs are especially valuable because of a genetic abnormality that gives them irregular blotches on their coat, Kelly said.
“They are big marshmallows in a lot of ways,” she said. “They are loving, fierce protectors but not with that unpredictability reputation that pitbulls have.”
Anyone with information regarding this investigation is asked to contact police at 763-593-8059 or at police@goldenvalleymn.gov.
“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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