Star Tribune
In wake of tragedy, decals supporting Burnsville police and fire departments are in high demand
Phones have been ringing off the hook and presses running continuously at a Lakeville printing company trying to keep up with demand for decals pledging support for the Burnsville Police and Fire departments.
Print Lab Wraps has been flooded with requests from people wanting to buy the decals featuring emblems of two agencies that lost first responders Sunday morning, when they were fatally shot while answering a domestic violence call in Burnsville.
“It’s crazy, nuts,” said Print Lab Wraps General Manager Dennis Swanson. “It’s people close [to Burnsville] and far away reaching out asking how to get the decal. It’s impressive how many people want to show support.”
It all started Sunday night when Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) CEO Luther Wynder heard that medic Adam Finseth, 40, and police officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, had been killed in the line of duty. With the transit agency’s headquarters in Burnsville, Wynder said he interacts with the department’s officers regularly. He wanted to do something.
Wynder contacted Schmitty & Sons, the bus company that provides drivers and mechanics to MVTA. That led to the idea for the decals. Overnight, Print Lab Wraps staff printed up 100 decals and bus company crews worked through the night to affix them to every MVTA bus that pulled out Monday morning, Wynder said.
“It was a collaborative effort,” said Kathryn Forbord, director of Operations for Schmitty & Sons. “Supporting law enforcement, that is at the heart of what we are doing.”
An image of the decals hit social media and “it snowballed from there,” Swanson said. Law enforcement, individuals and even youth hockey teams wanting to put them on their helmets began calling wondering how to get them.
“The phones have not stopped ringing. Nonstop is an understatement,” said Dana Bungert, who works in Print Lab Wrap’s operations. The firm has only 12 employees and “we can only answer the phone so many times a day.”
She said it’s best to email the firm at info@printlabwraps.com.
The company is giving decals away free to first responders, and asking others to contribute $1 to cover materials and labor costs.
“We are trying to keep this as cheap as possible,” Swanson said. “We are not making any profit.”
The firm has also printed about 1,000 decals to be given away at Burnsville City Hall while supplies last.
Wynder said MVTA also gave 12 decals to Metro Transit to display on Orange Line buses, which run from Burnsville to downtown Minneapolis.
“The MVTA is here to support Burnsville Fire and Police,” Wynder said. “This was a crisis that will affect our city for a long time to come. Our buses keep going through the community, and we’re showing our support and keeping them in our memory.”
“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.
