Star Tribune
Chronic teenage speeder crashes in Minneapolis, leaves passenger to die in fiery wreck, charges say
A 19-year-old woman with a brief but extensive penchant for speeding crashed her car on a well-traveled Minneapolis street late at night and left one of her passengers to die in the fiery wreck, according to charges filed Friday.
Mackenzie Rose Lene, of Minneapolis, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with hit-and-run criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation in connection with the single-vehicle crash on March 31 that killed 20-year-old Cole Jacob Thompson, of Blaine, and severely burned another of her passengers.
Lene was jailed Wednesday afternoon and remained jail in lieu of $10,000 bail. She is due in court on May 30. Her attorney, Joshua London, declined to comment on the allegations.
The passenger who survived has at least another month remaining in the hospital ahead of skin grafts and multiple surgeries, the criminal complaint noted. His name has yet to be released.
Court records show that Lene has been cited for speeding four times from April 2022 to July 2023, with her exceeding the limit anywhere from 21 to 29 miles per hour.
She also was charged nine months ago and convicted in Hennepin County of a misdemeanor for drinking and driving while under the age of 21 late at night in Maple Grove.
Thompson died one day before his 21st birthday.
“When Cole was born on April Fool’s Day,” his online obituary read, “he ‘understood the assignment’ and brought intense laughter and spread positivity everywhere he went. Throughout his life, ‘Caveman’ Cole was the CEO of adventure and had an authentic vibe like no other.”
A posting on an online fundraising campaign on behalf of the family read that “Early Easter morning, two Blaine police officers knocked on Kris and Carie Thompson’s door to deliver the worst news any parent can ever hear. Kris and Amy’s eldest son, Cole Jacob Thompson (Lorenzen), had passed away in a tragic car accident the night before. … Now, instead of celebrating Easter as a family, they were faced with the realization that Cole would never be coming home.”
According to the criminal complaint:
Officers arrived about 12:35 a.m. and saw that the car had hit a tree. Thompson was down in the road and appeared dead. A second male was standing near the car and appeared to have serious burns along with a concussion and three broken ribs.
Two people nearby told police they heard an explosion, ran toward the street and saw Lene and a man standing outside the car. One of the witnesses told police that he and another man pulled a passenger from the backseat and placed him on the ground. The other witness reported seeing Lene and a man leaving and climbing over a wall as emergency responders arrived.
Police traced the car to a home roughly three-fourths of a mile away and collected video surveillance from the area that showed a man and a woman, later determined to be Lene and one of her passengers, walking in the alley and speaking to each other.
“I’m going home as soon as possible,” Lene said. “I have to talk to my dad … ruined my life, don’t you understand.”
The man responded, “You’re going to be OK when you get home.” He then said, “I’ll help you find your car in the morning.”
Lene yelled, “It’s burnt the [expletive] up!”
The seriously burned passenger told officers days later that all four were in Lene’s car that evening and were “passing around a bottle of alcohol” before attending a birthday party. The passenger said Thompson didn’t want to drive, so Lene got behind the wheel and was “driving fast and aggressively.”
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Donald Trump walked down the steps of the Boeing 757 that bears his name, walked across a rain-soaked tarmac and, after twice missing the handle, climbed into the passenger seat of a white garbage truck that also carried his name.
The former president, once a reality TV star known for his showmanship, wanted to draw attention to a remark made a day earlier by his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, that suggested Trump’s supporters were garbage. Trump has used the remark as a cudgel against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
”How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump said, wearing an orange and yellow safety vest over his white dress shirt and red tie. ”This is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Trump and other Republicans were facing pushback of their own for comments by a comedian at a weekend Trump rally who disparaged Puerto Rico as a ”floating island of garbage.” Trump then seized on a comment Biden made on a late Wednesday call that “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The president tried to clarify the comment afterward, saying he had intended to say Trump’s demonization of Latinos was unconscionable. But it was too late.
On Thursday, after arriving in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for an evening rally, Trump climbed into the garbage truck, carrying on a brief discussion with reporters while looking out the window — similar to what he did earlier this month during a photo opportunity he staged at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
He again tried to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose joke had set off the firestorm, but Trump did not denounce it. He also said he did not need to apologize to Puerto Ricans.
”I don’t know anything about the comedian,” Trump said. ”I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it was a statement that he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I know nothing about him.”
If Revolve Labs, formerly known as Bit49, can start bringing in revenue at the new AI data center, the company should be able to move or decommission the machines at the existing site, St. Onge said.
“The ideal would be to phase out our current site and move everything over to the new site,” St. Onge said at the public hearing.
Several Glencoe residents at Tuesday’s public hearing, which addressed whether to rezone the property Revolve Labs intends to buy, appeared skeptical about the company’s proposal. “Revolve Labs has not proven themselves to be good neighbors,” Gould said to St. Onge at the hearing.
Eddie Gould, 80, confronts a representative from Revolve Labs, a Colorado-based company that runs a crypto-mining facility near his home, at a public hearing Tuesday in Glencoe, Minn. (Jp Lawrence)
But many at the public hearing seemed to welcome the possibility that the company might remove the noisy machines at its current site, which is near the town’s 646,000 square-foot Seneca Foods plant, a Dairy Queen and the corner of a residential neighborhood.
Crypto mining uses huge amounts of computing power, which need to be cooled by banks of fans. Over the past few years, the noise of these fans has led to complaints from residents living near crypto mining facilities across America.
In southwestern Minnesota, similar concerns about noise led to dozens of residents in Windom voicing their opposition in August to a conditional use application by Revolve Labs to build a facility there. The company pulled out of the proposal a month later, citing feedback from the community.
Longtime business owner and photographer Shawn Fagan has been named the next executive director of the Rochester Downtown Alliance (RDA).
Fagan, who had been on the RDA’s staff as a deputy director since the summer, takes over for Kathleen Harrington, who led the organization in an interim capacity for the past year and a half.
“Shawn’s passion for downtown, his collaborative spirit, and his strategic vision for growth make him the perfect choice to lead the RDA forward,” Harrington said in a written statement.
Fagan and his wife, Michelle, have been involved in the downtown since 2003 when they opened a photography studio along South Broadway. They later bought the 151-year-old building and added an event space, Studio 324, that they continue to operate. For their contributions to downtown, the couple received the Sandy Keith Downtown Impact Award recipient in 2021.
The Fagans also own Café Aquí, a coffee shop just outside the city’s special services district.
With his new role, Fagan will be responsible for leading the downtown business community through a period of major anticipation and disruption tied to Mayo Clinic’s $5 billion build-out.
The RDA, which represents more than 300 downtown stakeholders, is best known for putting on popular events like Thursdays Downtown and Social-ICE. The organization is also responsible for managing a public service program that provides cleaning, hospitality and safety services to the 44-block district.
