Star Tribune
Plea terms toughened for Minnesota man whose gun was used by 4-year-old to kill little brother
A new guilty plea agreement was accepted Friday in the case of a southern Minnesota man charged in the death of his 2-year-old boy who was shot by his 4-year-old brother with an unsecured gun.
In April, Martin County District Judge Michael Trushenski tossed out the deal reached a month earlier between County Attorney Taylor McGowan and the defense for 34-year-old Colton Mammenga of Welcome, Minn., in connection with the Oct. 15 shooting of Matthew Alshaikhnasser in a moving pickup truck.
The terms of the initial plea deal called for the dismissal of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter charges and one count of negligent storage of a gun. In exchange, Mammenga agreed to plead guilty to felony child endangerment.
The deal also called for no jail time, no fines and for the plea to be entered under a stay of adjudication, meaning the conviction would have come off his record after adhering to the terms of his probation.
The new agreement, reached this week, now could result in jail time and will remain on Mammenga’s record. It calls for Mammenga to admit to the same charge as before and sets aside any imprisonment. It also caps jail time at 90 days with electronic home monitoring as an option. Mammenga must also serve 500 hours of community service and speaking engagements as previously agreed upon.
McGowan said the judge accepted the new terms at a hearing Friday morning. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 6.
In a letter to the judge before the first plea deal was rejected, McGowan explained that “a young child died as the result of an action that was accidental, yet at the same time criminal. Mr. Mammenga is someone who loved that child and is no doubt punishing himself more than the state court could ever do.”
According to the charges:
At the time of the shooting, Mammenga was in the pickup truck with the two boys and their mother, who was in a relationship with Mammenga.
A deputy found the pickup outside Fairmont and pulled it over to the shoulder. Mammenga got out of the vehicle holding Matthew, who had a gunshot wound on top of his head.
Mammenga performed CPR before an ambulance crew arrived and took over. He told law enforcement the 4-year-old accidentally shot Matthew while the truck was in motion, and the gun was still in the back seat with the older child. The injured boy was taken by air ambulance to a Rochester hospital, where he died two days later.
Three rifles and ammunition and magazines for those weapons were also seized from the truck by law enforcement, according to court records filed by the Sheriff’s Office.
The 4-year-old told a deputy he got the gun from the front seat when the boys were left alone in the truck while Mammenga and the mother went inside to get something. Mammenga told police he had left his gun in the passenger side door pocket before going inside.
Star Tribune
Twin Cities man guilty of murder for fatally stabbing fellow group home resident nearly 2 dozen times
The staffer told a 911 dispatcher that she didn’t hear anything further from the room and said “something isn’t right.”
A police officer arrived and saw a shirtless Adams running from the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses across the street and into the group home. In a Kingdom Hall trash can, police located a “badly bent” and bloody kitchen knife inside a garbage bag. Another bag held a pair of blood-soaked gloves.
Officers located Rahn in his room with stab wounds to his neck and back. Medics declared him dead at the scene.
Adams gave various accounts to police about how and why Rahn was stabbed.
The medical examiner found stab wounds to Rahn’s face, neck, upper body and elsewhere. He also suffered at least 20 stab wounds to one of his hands, which are “consistent with defensive wounds,” the complaint said.
The title track from the coming album by FKA Twigs, “Eusexua,” isn’t exactly euphoric or sexy. Produced by FKA Twigs, Koreless and Earthearter, the track runs on nervous, hopping 16th-notes and distant chords under FKA Twigs’ whispery soprano before a beat fully kicks in. It’s anxious and tentative at first, wondering about a primal, possibly dangerous, possibly life-changing attraction: “Don’t call it love — eusexua.” Later, as the rhythm revs up, she promises, “You feel alone, you’re not alone.” But the propulsion falls away, leaving her “on the edge of something greater than before,” but dangling.
JON PARELES, New York Times
Suki Waterhouse, “Model, Actress, Whatever”
Stardom, by definition, is one of the rarest occupations. It’s also a wildly disproportionate topic for songwriters to take on. The immensely sly, self-conscious and droopy-voiced English model, actress and songwriter Waterhouse takes up the self-pity of a star in “Model, Actress, Whatever,” the title song of her new EP. It’s a slow-building waltz about what happens after making it big: “All of my dreams came true/The bigger the ocean, the deeper the blue,” she declares. She musters grandiose orchestral production to sum up a feeling of emptiness.
JON PARELES, New York Times
Administrator David Hough told the County Board that much of the rest of the new spending is directed at employee salaries and benefits. The county workforce is expected to remain flat at nearly 10,000 employees.
The proposed capital budget includes $100 million for the Blue Line Light Rail extension. Another $45 million is slated for projects at HCMC, including a new parking ramp that will help make room for the eventual construction of an inpatient hospital tower.
Commissioners will meet with department leaders over the next two months to work on specifics of the 2025 budget before approving it in mid-December.
Ramsey County officials pitched a 4.75% maximum levy increase for 2025, as expected, late last month.
Ramsey County is on a rare biennial budget cycle, meaning it approved its 2025 budget last year, anticipating this year’s 4.75% increase. There’s a caveat, though: Then-County Manager Ryan O’Connor said at the time that cannabis sales tax could lower the 2025 levy. It didn’t, former Interim County Manager Johanna Berg said last month, because the county doesn’t have a sense of what that revenue will look like yet.
The 2025 supplemental budget is $848.5 million and represents a 5% increase from last year. That’s slightly larger than the 2025 budget approved last year, largely because of grants the county accepted to cover therapeutic youth treatment homes and violence prevention services. Property taxes fund about 46% of Ramsey County’s 2025 budget.
