Star Tribune
On eve of sentencing, beliefs of Twin Cities man who discussed killing cops are under microscope
Federal prosecutors are urging a judge this week to elevate the sentence of a young Twin Cities man caught buying illegal machine gun conversion devices from an FBI informant, arguing that his extremist ideologies and interest in deadly armed conflicts with police warrant a decade in prison.
River William Smith, arrested in December 2022, pled guilty last year to buying the gun parts from an undercover FBI informant, bringing to a close an investigation that followed reports of concerning behavior at a shooting range. Smith last year made a straight plea to one charge of illegally possessing a machine gun. Now, his attorney is calling for an 18-month prison sentence, instead describing his client as a non-violent video game enthusiast who took an FBI informant’s bait.
Smith was arrested peacefully after purchasing two machine gun conversion devices, or switches, and three inert hand grenades from one of two undercover informants helping investigate him in 2022. He was wearing soft armor and possessed a loaded Glock handgun and agents recovered from his vehicle an assault-style rifle and nearly 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Prosecutors and federal agents have raised alarms about statements from Smith, 21, of Savage, supporting Nazi paramilitary groups and mass killings of law enforcement, the LGBTQ community and Muslims. He often spoke of waging a deadly gun battle with law enforcement and dubbed as a “hero” the perpetrator of a deadly attack on a Colorado LGBTQ night club, according to court records.
“Ultimately, the defendant is a heavily armed, angry, socially isolated, and bullied marksman who harbors a grievance against law enforcement, racial and religious minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, and virtually anyone who does not fit in with his vision of society,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter wrote last week in a memo supporting his case for a 10-year elevated sentence. “The defendant presents a unique danger to the community and the sentence imposed in this case should reflect this reality.”
Smith first landed on law enforcement’s radar at age 17 in 2019, when he discharged an AK-47 in the home he shared with his grandparents in the south metro suburbs. His grandmother was injured when she cut her hand on a doorknob that had been rendered shrapnel by the shooting, according to court records and testimony. Police found several handguns, a rifle, shotgun, magazines, tactical equipment and ammunition during a search of the home. And law enforcement found searches on his electronic devices relating to Hitler and Nazis, bomb-making and videos of gay people being killed.
Smith’s attorney, Jordan Kushner, is calling Winter’s request for a 10-year sentence “outrageous.” Smith had never committed an act of violence or harmed anyone, Kushner said, and instead was more interested in recreating “action that he viewed on video games.” In court on Wednesday, Kushner said he never followed through on violent statements, and noted that it was not illegal to research any of the topics that appeared in his web search history.
“The government’s dislike for Mr. Smith’s ideologies (some of which he has renounced), his interests and fantasies, and the fact that he does not like the government, are inappropriate considerations for sentencing,” Kushner wrote in his own memo to Senior U.S. District Judge David Doty.
Doty is scheduled to sentence Smith on Thursday in Minneapolis. On Wednesday, he took testimony from witnesses that included a senior FBI behavioral profiler during an evidentiary hearing requested by the government.
Smith, who’s been held at the Sherburne County Jail since his arrest, appeared in an orange sweatsuit. Seated in the back of the courtroom behind him was a row of family and supporters who waved and blew kisses.
Winter cited recorded jail calls between August 2023 and October 2023 as evidence that Smith still poses a danger. During one call, he told his mother that if he had to serve 10 years in prison, “they have my word that I won’t leave this country. It’ll be settled right here.”
A month later, speaking to his grandmother: “give me seven years and I promise you, you’ll find out why I did what I did to go to the range that much and why I took that so seriously. Cause it’s the one skill that helps deal with little [expletives] like that.”
FBI Special Agent Erinn Tobin, the lead case agent investigating Smith, further testified Wednesday that she reviewed 300 of some 4,900 calls made from jail since his Dec. 2022 arrest. During one call back home to family, Tobin testified, Smith “said he just wanted sentencing to be over so he could ‘focus on the warpath.'”
Transforming the heart of both downtowns, which have much larger buildings than old warehouses, is going to take a lot more money, creativity and time. Josh Talberg, managing director at downtown Minneapolis brokerage JLL, said with no major apartment buildings on the drawing board in either downtown, the fleet of empty office buildings present a golden opportunity to create more housing and lead both cities in a new direction.
“You can can certainly see the fundamentals improving, and you can feel that vibrancy, and that’s ultimately the foundation that’s needed to get investors to reinvest in the city,” he said. “But it’s not as if these 18-wheelers can turn on a dime.”
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
