Star Tribune
MPD officers among first to arrive for service honoring Minneapolis police officer Jamal Mitchell
Final preparations are being made this morning for a memorial service in Maple Grove for Minneapolis police officer Jamal Mitchell, who was fatally shot late last month.
The public service for Mitchell in the Maple Grove High School gymnasium is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. and last about two hours, organizers announced. Seating for the general public begins at 9 a.m.
Memorial service viewing will also be available on the YouTube page for KSTP-TV, Ch. 5.
Hours ahead of the service, a convoy of Minneapolis Police Department squads formed a somber image as it exited the highway in the rain on its way to the high school.
After the service, an honors ceremony will be held outside the school, where law enforcement officers from around the state and the country will fall into formation and military jets will conduct a flyover.
Gov. Tim Walz will also be in attendance, according to his public schedule. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar will also be among the dignitaries on hand for the service.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Mitchell’s body will be escorted in a procession from the high school at 9800 Fernbrook Lane N. to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport ahead of his return to his native Connecticut, the organizers said.
The procession route of more than 30 miles, starting in the city Mitchell called home, is largely along two major Twin Cities freeways, which will allow viewing from various overpasses. It will run south along Interstate 494, then east on Hwy. 62 before arriving at the airport. Motorists should anticipate intermittent highway closures as the procession moves along.
New Haven, Conn., police said Tuesday that Mitchell’s body is scheduled to arrive late Wednesday afternoon at Bradley Airport in the capital city of Hartford.
Contingents from the Connecticut State Police and New Haven Police Department will greet Mitchell’s family at the airport and escort them to the McClam Funeral Home in New Haven, said officer Christian Bruckhart, New Haven police spokesman.
Funeral services for Mitchell are scheduled for Monday at the Hillhouse High School Floyd Little Athletic Center, Bruckhart said. Viewing hours are planned for 9 to 11 a.m., with the service to immediately follow, the spokesman said. Burial will be at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, police said.
Along with Mitchell, three other people were killed in back-to-back shootings in a two-block stretch of S. Blaisdell Avenue late on the afternoon of May 30. Among the dead is Mustafa Ahmed Mohamed, 35, of Eden Prairie, who state investigators say shot Mitchell at close range in the 2100 block of Blaisdell after the officer asked him whether he needed help.
Initial word from police pointed to Mohamed as the gunman who killed two people in an apartment moments before he was shot by two police officers.
Star Tribune staff writer Greta Kaul contributed to this report.
Health insurer UCare has reached an agreement with HealthPartners clinics, which will allow thousands of patients to continue seeing the same doctors without switching health plans next year.
The two companies announced the agreement Friday evening. The terms are effective immediately.
“As mission-driven organizations, UCare and HealthPartners share a commitment to improving health outcomes for our community, and the organizations’ ongoing collaboration reflects that shared goal,” a joint statement said.
The clinics had been out of network for several years, but UCare had waived rules that would have blocked patients from making appointments. UCare said it would start enforcing the network rules Jan. 1.
Star Tribune
Man charged in Brooklyn Park homicide had connection to 2022 Mall of America fatal shooting
A 19-year-old Coon Rapids man, who played a role in a 2022 fatal shooting at the Mall of America, is facing murder charges in connection with an apparent targeted shooting earlier this month in Brooklyn Park.
Citing witnesses, surveillance footage and cell phone data, prosecutors say that Marquan D. Tucker waited in a parking lot Dec. 7 before opening fire on two people when they exited a business in the 8000 block of Brooklyn Boulevard.
The two victims returned fire, though one was wounded and the other, Ramone R. Blue, 23, of Stewartville, Minn., was killed. The complaint, filed Friday, offers no motive for the shooting.
The shooting happened about seven months after Tucker was discharged from court monitoring related to the 2022 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Johntae Hudson in a department store at the Mall of America, according to court records.
Tucker was charged with third-degree riot in the case and was adjudicated as delinquent, or found guilty, court records said. He was one of three teens who confronted or chased Hudson into the store where the shooting happened. The two teens who carried guns received long prison sentences.
Tucker was being held Friday at the Hennepin County jail. It wasn’t clear if he yet had an attorney.
According to the criminal complaint:
Surveillance video shows a black BMW pull into the parking lot in Brooklyn Park around 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 7. As the two victims exit a business, a man leaves the passenger seat of the BMW, hides behind another car and fires about 16 shots. The gunman then flees in the BMW.
Talon Metals, the company proposing an underground nickel mine near Tamarack, Minn., has backed away from a novel plan that would have used a subway-digging machine to carve an underground loop to reach the ore.
Instead, Talon, which hopes to one day supply the materials for Tesla’s electric vehicle batteries, will dig a straight path down to those minerals. The revised environmental assessment worksheet filed Dec. 12 incorporated public, state and tribal feedback, said Jessica Johnson, the vice president of external affairs for Talon.
“We’re reducing the amount of ground disturbance and the amount of rock that we need to handle and manage,” Johnson said.
By no longer using a tunnel boring machine, Talon has sidestepped early concerns from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources about waste rock, potential contamination of water and an untested technology for mining. But building a single, diagonal shaft underground also means that Talon will be blasting rock closer to the surface, at 100 feet below as opposed to 300 feet below.
Talon is still studying how many sulfides will be in the waste rock between the surface and the nickel it is seeking, the company said in filings. Sulfide minerals that can interact with air and water to create acid mine drainage, or release sulfates that are toxic to wild rice.
The company also abandoned a proposal to pile waste rock outside on top of liners, and now says it will store excess rock inside a central building — or ship it along with ore to a processing plant it intends to build in North Dakota.
Several parts of the facility have been moved inside this building, and the central mine shaft will also reach the surface indoors. Johnson described the concept as a “mine in a box.”
But the new design also introduces new questions, said Paula Maccabee of the environmental group WaterLegacy. She questioned how Talon would be able to supply enough fresh air for workers in the mine when the main opening is enclosed. Previously, the loop design had two openings at the surface of the ground.
