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Sheriff: Electrical fire likely cause of double-fatal house fire
Betty and Roman Jindra died Sunday in their Le Sueur County home after Betty called 911 and said they were trapped inside.
LE SUEUR COUNTY, Minn. — The Le Sueur County Sheriff says an “electrical component” likely caused a house fire that killed an elderly couple last Sunday.
The Montgomery Fire Department was one of four departments that responded to a 911 call at nearly 1 a.m. and discovered Betty, 73, and Roman Jindra, 76, dead in their kitchen. The sheriff says Betty had called to say the couple was trapped inside.
The first responders said they tried to enter the house but were driven back by heat and heavy smoke. Firefighters were able to put the fire out and vented smoke from the home.
“They were the most kind, genuine and heart warming people,” said their niece McKayla Weston-Walters.
She described Betty as a boisterous woman who never turned down a garage sale and Roman volunteered at the local church. The two celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last summer.
“When you saw Betty and Roman together, you knew they were in love,” said Weston-Walters.
The fire chief says his department hasn’t responded to such a deadly house fire in decades. The county is offering critical stress de-briefing for anyone on scene.
“I think everyone is in shock,” said Weston-Walters. “They don’t really know how to move forward yet.”
The couple’s funeral is Tuesday at St. John Lutheran Church in Montgomery. The family is asking for financial donations to support their only daughter to help with funeral expenses. You can click here for more information.
The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office will autopsy the bodies to determine their cause and manner of death in the coming days.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to the State Fire Marshall.
As of Wednesday afternoon, officials have not released any details about the woman’s condition.
TOFTE, Minn. — One person died and another was hospitalized Tuesday after a crash near the North Shore of Lake Superior.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying deputies responded to a reported traffic incident around 8:30 p.m. in the Tofte area. When deputies arrived, they located two people in the vehicle apparently needing medical attention.
Officials said one individual, Douglas Junker, of Edina, was pronounced dead at the scene. The other victim in the vehicle, a woman also from Edina, was transferred to a local hospital for treatment.
The sheriff did not release any details about her condition as of Wednesday afternoon.
Matthew Brown admitted to following a woman from the bar to her apartment the morning of July 19, 1984, and then stabbing Robert Miller when he tried to step in.
MINNEAPOLIS — A former Minnesota state prison security counselor will himself serve a 20-year sentence behind bars after admitting his guilt in a murder that went unsolved for decades.
Matthew Brown was in a Hennepin County Courtroom Monday, just over 40 years after the fatal stabbing of Robert Miller inside his south Minneapolis apartment. The prosecution and defense agreed to a 20-year sentence after Brown agreed to plead guilty, in part to spare his victim’s family the pain of having to sit through a trial.
Brown’s attorney read an allocation for the defendant, admitting that early the morning of July 19, 1984 he followed a woman home from the bar and then broke into the apartment she went into. The woman ran into the bathroom, and when the 32-year-old Miller jumped in to intervene, Brown brutally stabbed him to death.
Prosecutors said after the sentencing that 20 years “isn’t enough time,” but that the cold case had significant challenges – among them, many of the witnesses and investigators who contributed to the investigation are now dead.
KARE 11’s Lou Raguse spoke with the victim’s brother, Jim Miller, following the sentencing. Miller recalled sharing a bedroom with “Bobby” when the two were younger, and expressed gratitude that Robert got a chance to hold his youngest child on the Fourth of July that year, just weeks before the murder.
Jim Miller says while his brother’s violent death has haunted him for decades, he is doing his best to honor Robert by not holding on to hate, as “Bobby” would not have wanted that. Miller also noted that Brown – who eventually relocated to Moose Lake, where he worked at a prison for sexual offenders as a security counselor – rebuilt his life with a wife and children while living less than 30 minutes from Miller and his family. Miller added that he knows people who knew Brown and had no idea his brother’s killer was so close.
Miller added that the family is happy the case ended with a guilty plea so they didn’t have to sit through a trial, and told Raguse that they are not upset with prosecutors for the deal that was struck. He also thanked the police for refusing to give up on the case.
After growing cold over more than three decades, investigators got a breakthrough in the case in 2018 when advances in technology allowed the Minnesota BCA to develop a DNA profile built on blood recovered from the scene at 3209 Girard Ave. S. There were no hits in the nationwide system, but investigators soon consulted with a genealogist and determined that a Minnesota man named Matthew Russell Brown of Barnum was a potential suspect. They were able to collect a DNA sample from a plastic disposable cup Brown used in March of 2023, and the profile matched the blood collected at the murder scene.
Brown, who had relocated to Illinois, was extradited to Minnesota and charged with murder, burglary and assault in Robert Miller’s death.
The husband and wife, who was also pregnant, were snorkeling in Maui when they were found unresponsive on Sept. 14.
SEATTLE — A couple from Washington died in Maui over the weekend after first responders found the husband and wife unresponsive in the water where they were snorkeling, according to the Maui County Fire Department.
Family members identified the couple as 25-year-old Ilya Tsaruk and 26-year-old Sophia Tsaruk, according to a GoFundMe page. Sophia was pregnant and the couple also had an 18-month-old son, who was with other family members and not with them at the time of their deaths.
The Tsaruks are from Snohomish, according to public records.
On Saturday, Maui County Fire said firefighters responded to reports of snorkelers in distress near the north side of Āhihi-Kīnaʻu Natural Area Reserve on Maui. They found Sophia unresponsive in the water and took her to shore to begin CPR. First responders then went back out on the water and found Ilya underwater approximately 150 yards offshore, the department said.
Resuscitation efforts were not successful and both people died at the scene.
The couple was on vacation together and were expecting a daughter.
“Yesterday, we lost a dear sister and brother, daughter and son, and beautiful niece, but we know that heaven received and gained the three of them with open arms,” the fundraiser states. “Ilya and Sophia both loved the Lord and were always serving in the church and serving people around them. Sophia had the voice of an angel, and together with Ilya, they sang in a worship group in their church.”
“We are blessed to have had both of them in our lives and are left now with the sweet memories and moments that we shared together with them,” the page states.
So far, the GoFundMe has raised over $111,000 toward funeral expenses and for their son.
