Star Tribune
Burnsville police officer Paul Elmstrand remembered as loving husband, father with a unique laugh
Burnsville police officer Paul Elmstrand was a devoted husband and father with a strong sense of duty who was on his way to a career as a policeman even as a teenager, when he joined his high school’s law enforcement club.
“He’d look you right in the eye and say hi,” recalled Mark Solberg, the former activities director at Cambridge-Isanti High School. “A lot of kids don’t do that. They just keep walking. That was always impressive to me — that here’s this guy walking by and saying hello. Because if he said hello to me, he was probably saying hello to everybody else.”
Close friend Mike Seafolk said that seriousness of purpose came leavened with a serious sense of humor.
“Paul’s unique laugh brightened everyone’s lives around him,” Seafolk wrote in an email to the Star Tribune. “Using his witty sense of humor, Paul was always a light in hard times, using his gifts to lift up those around him. Everyone who called Paul their friend knew how pure his selfless heart was, and how special he was to those he loved.”
Elmstrand and his colleagues, officer Matthew Ruge and firefighter-paramedic Adam Finseth, were fatally shot while responding to a domestic violence incident in Burnsville Sunday morning.
Elmstrand, 27, grew up in rural Isanti County. Solberg, said Elmstrand was senior class president, a member of the student council, a National Honor Society member and volunteered with a program to help ninth-graders acclimate to high school.
In high school, Elmstrand participated not just in law enforcement club but also the Isanti County Law Enforcement Explorers program, which gave students a first-hand look at law enforcement, according to Press Publications.
Jennifer Magnuson coached Elmstrand in tennis and knew him as a friend of her son and a hardworking kid with a strong sense of ethics — an important trait when you’re making your own calls in a match.
“I think what stood out about Paul is his ethical integrity: he was passionate about what he was doing when he was playing, yet he was truthful and honest,” Magnuson said.
In his senior yearbook, Elmstrand, along with another classmate, was highlighted for his unique laugh.
That’s something Seafolk remembers about his close friend. The two became friends in high school, were roommates in college and were in each other’s weddings. Seafolk described Elmstrand as a devoted husband, loving father and a man of faith.
Elmstrand and his wife, Cindy Elmstrand-Castruita, went to the same schools from the time they were small children, and began dating in high school, she told CBS News in an interview.
“He was the most generous, loving, patient person I’ve ever known,” she told CBS. “He could have a conversation with anyone and make them feel seen. He would drop everything to help someone who was in need, whether it be family, friend or someone on the street.”
The couple both went on to college at the University of Northwestern from Cambridge-Isanti High School. They married in 2018, and had two children together: a 2-year-old girl and 5-month-old boy, according to a Facebook post from the University of Northwestern alumni page.
Elmstand joined the Burnsville Police Department as a community service officer in 2017. In 2019, he was promoted to officer. He served on the department’s Honor Guard, field training unit, mobile command staff and peer team.
He was also a part-time officer with the University of Minnesota police, providing public safety services during events at the stadium, homecoming and events.
The Law Enforcement Labor Services Benevolent Fund is accepting donations on behalf of Elmstrand, Ruge and Finseth’s families.
“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.
