Star Tribune
Killings near Minneapolis homeless encampment weren’t random
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced Monday that her office is bringing additional murder charges against Joshua Anthony Jones after he allegedly killed two men and shot two others near a homeless encampment in Minneapolis two weeks ago.
Jones, 36, of Bemidji, now stands charged with two counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder and three counts of illegal firearms possession from the roving attacks that occurred over nearly 15 hours on Sept. 18.
While the shootings were in proximity to a homeless encampment in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, Moriarty said it does not appear that the victims were living at the encampment or that Jones was trying to kill people living at the encampment.
“He did actually appear to have known the people that he targeted,” Moriarty said at a news conference. She added that a specific motive for the killings remains under investigation.
The two men killed were Roland Scott Littleowl, 20, and Robert Milton Brown, 39, of Minneapolis.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office provided a timeline of the allegations against Jones:
At 4:39 a.m., Jones walked into an alley on the 2500 block of 17th Avenue S. and shot Littleowl and another man in the head and shot at a third person but missed. Littleowl died at the scene, the other shooting victim survived. At 4:21 p.m. Jones is seen on surveillance video walking up to Brown on the 2500 block of Bloomington Avenue S. and shooting him in the head. Brown also died at the scene. At 7:19 p.m., Jones approached a fifth victim near the intersection of 24th Street and 18th Avenue S. and shot at him multiple times, hitting him in the shoulder.
A short time later, Jones was arrested.
A stalled motorhome on the side of Interstate 35E in Eagan caught fire Sunday, killing a 30-year-old driver inside.
The incident was reported at 10:18 p.m. on northbound I-35E at Northwood Parkway, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.
It’s unclear how the motorhome caught fire, but the driver was unable to exit in time. The State Patrol identified the driver as Steven R. Tekautz of Inver Grove Heights.
The state patrol did not immediately respond to a request for more information Monday.
St. Paul police say a man stole a car while its owner was taking field sobriety tests during a traffic stop, then arrested later the same night.
The suspect has been identified as Kyle Stuart Vanwert, 39. He is also facing burglary charges from a case in April.
The incident began just after 6 p.m. on Sunday, when St. Paul police pulled a car over in the 800 block of West 7th Street on suspicion of drunk driving. While the woman was undergoing field sobriety tests with police, a man “suddenly” jumped into the car and drove off with it, St. Paul Police Sgt. Mike Ernster said.
The owner told police she had an AirTag tracking device inside the car. Officers from multiple police agencies were alerted to help locate the vehicle, Ernster said. Richfield and Bloomington police officers located the vehicle in Richfield near the intersection of Nicollet Avenue and 77th Street.
The officers arrested Vanwert, and Ernster said police identified him as the man who took the vehicle on 7th Street. He was booked into Ramsey County Jail and remained there on Monday.
The woman whose car was stolen was found to not be driving over the legal limit for alcohol concentration and her vehicle was returned to her, Ernster said.
On April 24, Vanwert was charged with first-degree burglary, after charges say he caused property damage to a fifth-floor apartment at the Dorothy Day Residence complex, where Vanwert lived. He was accused of breaking into another resident’s apartment with a hammer. His attorney for the burglary case did not return requests for comment Monday.
Vanwert was issued a conditional release on Sept. 10, after posting $10,000 bail. The release was granted on the requirement that Vanwert be transferred to in an in-patient treatment facility.
Thousands of Verizon customers have not been able to use their mobile phones to make calls Monday after the carrier confirmed an outage affecting its wireless network.
“We are aware of an issue impacting service for some customers,” a statement from the company emailed to the Star Tribune said. “Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to identify and solve the issue.”
The company did not specifically say what the problem was, but it was impacting customers coast to coast. Locally, more than 2,600 customers in the Twin Cities reported outages, according to Downdetector.com, which monitors outages for telecommunications providers and other businesses. Verizon
The website reported more than 104,000 customers unable to access Verizon’s network at the peak of the outage, which began about 8:30 a.m. Twin Cities time. By noon, the numbers had begun to drop, according to Downdetector.com.
Most unable to make calls were still able to make emergency calls as phones were still operated in SOS mode. Customers posting on Downdetector.com reported outages in Lakeville, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Vadnais Heights, Anoka, Eden Prairie and Elk River.
