Star Tribune
Father sues undercover officer who shot and killed his son while executing warrant near East Grand Forks
The father of a man shot and killed by an undercover officer near East Grand Forks, Minn., has sued the officer in federal court, alleging it was an unjustified use of deadly force while executing an arrest warrant.
The suit was filed Feb. 9 in U.S. District Court by Rodney Paul Romuld, the father of Lucas Gilbertson, 42, who was shot and killed in January. The suit names as the defendant Aeisso Schrage, an officer with the Pine to Prairie Drug Task Force who allegedly shot Gilbertson.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension continues to investigate the shooting. Romuld’s attorney DeWayne Johnston said he has concerns about the investigation thus far and that he believed it made sense to sue before the investigation is complete.
“We felt that it was so egregious that the lawsuit would be properly started now,” Johnston said Wednesday.
Through the East Grand Forks police, Schrage declined to comment on the lawsuit because the case is still under investigation by the BCA. Online court records do not show an attorney for him.
Just before noon on Jan. 9, members of the multicounty task force arrived at the home in the 19100 block of SW. 445th Avenue with a warrant to arrest Gilbertson, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
The drug task force members surrounded the home in order to stop Gilbertson from escaping, the office said. The home belonged to Gilbertson’s mother, Gail Gilbertson, according to the lawsuit.
At one point during the standoff, Gilbertson briefly came outside before retreating back inside. The undercover officer, who had not been named publicly before, later entered the home, according to the Sheriff’s Office release. The officer encountered Gilbertson before deploying his Taser and firing his department handgun, striking Gilbertson multiple times, according to the BCA and Sheriff’s Office.
Gilbertson was taken to Altru Hospital in Grand Forks, N.D., where he died.
The lawsuit says Gilbertson was unarmed when he was shot and that he threw his own gun out a window after breaking the glass earlier in the standoff.
The undercover officer who shot Gilbertson was not wearing a body camera, but other officers at the scene were. The footage, obtained by the Star Tribune, shows officers surround the house, with some sitting in a pickup truck beforehand, one commenting, “I hope he doesn’t have a gun or anything.”
Another video shows an officer talk with Gilbertson’s mother at the front door as she denies that her son is home. Several officers later move to the back yard, with their guns drawn, one commenting that Gilbertson appeared to have a gun. The officers begin yelling from the back yard for Gilbertson to come out of the house. One officer comments about hearing glass breaking and that Gilbertson threw something out of it, before hearing the shots fired by the undercover officer.
The lawsuit alleges that Schrage violated Gilbertson’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that it was unreasonable and excessive deadly force.
“Defendant Aeisso Schrage was reckless and deliberately indifferent to the health and safety of Lucas Paul Gilbertson, to the degree that it shocks the conscience,” Romuld’s attorney DeWayne Johnston wrote in the lawsuit.
The suit also claims Schrage violated Gilbertson’s constitutional rights to due process and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
In the months leading up to the shooting, Gilbertson told his father multiple times that he feared Schrage and that the officer “wants me dead,” the suit alleges. It added that Gilbertson knew Schrage from attending high school together in East Grand Forks. Johnston said he thinks there were personal motivations behind the shooting.
“It did definitely appear personal to some degree,” he said.
Attorney David Thompson, who is assisting Johnston, added that the plaintiffs are concerned, accusing the BCA of having “no interest in following up” on the history between Schrage and Gilbertson. A BCA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegation.
The suit requests a money judgment against Schrage, compensatory and punitive monetary damages, reimbursement for attorney and lawsuit fees, and “legal and equitable relief as the court deems appropriate.”
Court records show Gilbertson was the subject of numerous arrest warrants for missing hearings stemming from a felony theft case, and that he has a history of defying law enforcement. During one attempt in October to arrest Gilbertson at his home, he threw furniture at Polk County Sheriff James Tadman and escaped capture.
A warrant was issued for his arrest in July after he failed to appear for a court hearing concerning charges filed in June 2022 in Polk County District Court alleging a string of felonies involving thefts and burglary.
Gilbertson had been convicted three times for fleeing police along with other convictions for forgery, illegal weapons possession, illicit drugs, burglary and domestic assault.
A BCA spokesperson said the investigation remains “active and ongoing” as of Tuesday. The BCA did not release the name of the officer due to Minnesota law protecting the identities of undercover officers.
Star Tribune staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this report.
“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.
