“I doubt if they’re going to get there by Christmas, even though I’m mailing them priority,” said Hager, a trust officer for the Department of the Interior and retired army colonel. “It’s just the way life is. Sometimes the vegetables don’t arrive on the island, so you gotta wait another week.”

In 2023, many residents across northern Minnesota and into the south metro complained their mail often didn’t arrive for days at a time. Hager said he felt USPS’s performance is “not as nearly as bad as last year” but still noticed mail arriving in the evenings when it used to arrive in the late morning.

Craig, who has been vocal about mail problems in her district, said it seemed as if USPS had “stabilized” in Minnesota relative to other parts of the country. But quarterly service reports show on-time mail delivery in the Minnesota-North Dakota district still slowed in 2024.

In the latest report, which covers July through September 2024, 84% of first-class, two-day mail, and 75% of three-to-five-day mail was delivered on time. That’s down from scores of 88% and 79% in the same period of 2023. All those scores are below national averages, which also fell during the same time period.

Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince said he knows from talking to four carriers in town that they are overworked and understaffed.

“I still get the impression that they believe that they’re still short-staffed relative to the workload,” he said. “They’re cautious in what they say, but I think they’re feeling stretched.”

A Gilbert, Minn., woman has been charged with third-degree murder after she allegedly gave drugs to a 25-year-old Mountain Iron man who died later from the effects of fentanyl and ethanol last summer.

Ashley Rose Cook, 20, whom investigators had been unable to find, was arrested earlier this week and arraigned in St. Louis County court in Hibbing on Tuesday. Her bail has been set at $500,000 and her next court appearance is Thursday. She is in the St. Louis County jail.

According to the criminal complaint, Cook wrote about her role in the man’s death in a private Facebook message sent on July 31.

“I gave [the victim a] perc 30 and he died,” she said. “Perc” is another name for oxycodone, according to DEA.gov.

Investigators also found a Facebook exchange between Cook and the victim indicating that she was looking for people who wanted to buy opioids.

A witness said that she and the victim met with Cook at a gas station in Gilbert. He got out of the car to talk to Cook, while the witness went to the bathroom to look for a phone she had left there earlier. The witness, her brother and the victim went home, where they planned to have a bonfire. The latter went to the bathroom but didn’t return. He was found dead alongside a piece of aluminum foil with burnt residue. An autopsy determined that he had died from the toxic effects of fentanyl and ethanol.

According to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Department, Cook’s arrest is the result of a nearly nine-month investigation by the Lake Superior Violent Offenders Task Force to “hold those accountable who profit off the deadly sale of controlled substances, particularly fentanyl.”

A Minneapolis man with a lengthy criminal history sentenced to more than five years in prison for drug and weapons convictions last week walked out of the Hennepin County Jail hours later after he was released on an apparent clerical error.

He has been out ever since.

Court documents show that Hennepin County District Judge Marta Chou sentenced Timothy Wayne Wilson, 60, on Thursday, Dec. 12 after he pleaded guilty to felony charges of second-degree drug possession and illegal possession of a firearm. He was ordered to report to the department of corrections at 10:30 a.m. that morning.

While there are no official court documents, a Hennepin County jail document shows that approximately 90 minutes later Chou ordered Wilson’s release. The jail processed that request and Wilson was released Thursday evening. How it happened remains murky.

A statement from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the county jail, said they followed Fourth Judicial District policy in releasing Wilson. The policy dictates that the county jail will use an electronic court tab application “to determine if a defendant is to remain in custody or to be released.”

The Sheriff’s Office also said it cannot access the electronic court tab and the judicial order is transmitted via court staff to the jail.

The Star Tribune obtained a copy of the “Hennepin County Jail Court Tab Report.” Under a column labeled “judicial order” it shows Chou ordered Wilson’s release.

A statement from the Hennepin County District Court said, “Judge Chou confirms that she sentenced the defendant to 68 months in prison, that she expected execution of the sentence to occur immediately, and that she did not order the defendant’s release.” They said an investigation into how the order was issued and Wilson was released is ongoing.