Star Tribune
Shannon Gooden killed self after fatally shooting 2 Burnsville officers and medic
Officials confirmed Tuesday that Shannon Cortez Gooden killed himself after fatally shooting two Burnsville police officers and a medic during a standoff over the weekend.
In a news release issued before dawn, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said Gooden, 38, died by suicide with a single gunshot to the head inside the home in the 12600 block of S. 33rd Avenue.
The Medical Examiner’s Office did not reveal the time that Gooden shot himself, but emergency dispatch audio suggests he took his own life around 6:45 a.m., when an officer radioed: “Shots fired from inside.”
About 10 minutes later, a dispatcher notified officers on the scene that a caller from inside the home disclosed that Gooden is “in the bedroom. … He just shot himself in the head.”
Killed were officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, and firefighter/paramedic Adam Finseth, 40. Wounded was 38-year-old Sgt. Adam Medlicott. Officials said Monday that Medlicott was treated at HCMC and was recovering at home.
Late Monday afternoon, the Medical Examiner’s Office said Elmstrand, Ruge and Finseth were all declared dead from homicide at HCMC between 6:33 a.m. and 6:46 a.m. on Sunday. Ruge was shot in the chest. Multiple gunshots hit Elmstrand, and Finseth was shot in the right arm and torso, the examiner’s office said.
No details have been released yet on memorial services for the officers and the medic.
Brian Hubbard, president of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial Association, said he and others met Monday with family members of those who were shot.
“Just as you would expect,” Hubbard, who also is deputy police chief in Crystal, told the Star Tribune, “they are in a state of shock and bewilderment.”
Gooden’s shooting spree was with a gun or guns he was banned from owning, stemming from a conviction for an assault in a Burnsville parking lot in 2007.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is leading the investigation into the deaths of the officers and medic, which have prompted an outpouring of grief from law enforcement and Minnesotans alike. They are the latest in a string of violence toward first responders in the region in recent months.
One aspect of the investigation could be how Gooden acquired the gun that he is believed to have used Sunday, given the lifetime ban he was under.
In August 2020, Gooden petitioned the court in vain to regain his right to own a gun. He explained that he wanted to protect himself and his family, according to court records. He also told the court he hadn’t been convicted of any further serious crimes, had taken anger management and parenting classes, advanced his education, maintained steady employment in the auto repair business for many years “and provided for his long-term girlfriend, her two children and his five children.”
The Dakota County Attorney’s Office countered that along with the assault conviction, Gooden “had additional encounters with police involving assaults, disorderly conduct and numerous traffic violations demonstrating a continued disregard to obey the law.”
The County Attorney’s Office also pointed to two petitions for orders for protection filed against him by women with whom he shared children. One of the women told the court that on Oct. 30, 2017, Gooden gave her a concussion and a black eye with a head-butt, and also threw her down the stairs.
The other woman said in her petition that on July 7, 2020, Gooden grabbed a knife while they argued “and cut her clothes and swiped her foot,” sending the woman down the stairs. At times, the woman continued, he would pull her hair, throw her against the wall and “even let family members assault [her].”
Neither woman successfully obtained an order for protection. In the 2017 filing, the woman failed to appear for a hearing. A judge dismissed the second petition for lack of evidence.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
