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.
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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