Star Tribune
NTSB reveals cause of fatal plane crash that crushed Duluth-area house
HERMANTOWN, MINN. – The pilot of a single-engine plane that crashed into a house in Hermantown in 2022 — killing the three people on board but not the homeowners — had expressed before the flight that he was “not confident about his instrument flying abilities,” according to the final report from the NTSB.
The plane, flown by Tyler Fretland, 32, of Burnsville left Duluth International Airport en route to South St. Paul late on Oct. 1, 2022, following a wedding here. Four minutes later, the plane crashed into electrical wires, then the two-story brick home on Arrowhead Road. Jason and Crystal Hoffman, who were asleep at the time of impact, escaped with just scrapes, but the high school sweethearts’ dream home was destroyed.
It’s likely that Fretland experienced “spatial disorientation” — an aviation term referring to an inability to sense positioning in context to the earth, according a report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. There was no evidence of mechanical failure before the crash.
The probable cause: “The pilot’s loss of airplane control due to spatial disorientation during initial climb in dark night and low instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a descent into terrain,” according to the report. “Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s fatigue due to a long day of flying and personal activities.”
Passengers Alyssa Schmidt, 32, of St. Paul, and Matthew Schmidt, 31, of Burnsville, who were siblings, died alongside Fretland in the crash. She was a second-grade teacher at Echo Park Elementary School of Leadership, Engineering and Technology in Burnsville. She was remembered as a bubbly, free spirit. Matthew Schmidt was also part of the flying community, according to his obituary, which said he had “discovered what made him feel alive.” Fretland had been interested in flying since he was a kid and dreamed of working for Delta Air Lines. He had a commercial pilot certificate and flight instructor certificate with 645.9 hours of flight experience.
It was a “night instrument flight rules” trip, meaning the pilot was dependent on the instruments in the cockpit rather than external visual cues. The clouds were low to the ground, visibility was reduced and it was misting lightly. The pilot ascended to a height where ground lights would have disappeared, according to the report.
The day before the accident, the pilot and a student flew on a night cross-country flight. Fretland reportedly told the student that he was flying to a wedding the following morning and was nervous because he wasn’t confident in his instrument flying abilities. He had 7.9 hours of instrument flight experience, .3 hours in the past 15 months.
According to the report, the plane briefly leveled at 2,800 feet before it began its rapid descent. Fretland had one more moment of contact with air traffic control, then did not respond to further communications. The plane likely hit the Hoffman’s house at a 40-degree left bank.
The first time I noticed that Trump’s red Make America Great Again hat had come into vogue was at the Lake Region Threshers Show in Otter Tail County, locally known as the Dalton threshing bee. (If you’ve never been, you should go. It’s amazing.)
It was 2016, and as my small son and I walked around the grounds, admiring the huge century-old tractors and getting a free ride on the steam engine, red hats were everywhere. One man was wearing one that said, “Make Dalton Great Again,” which made me chuckle, imagining this small farming community as a long-ago mighty empire.
I always thought Trump looked like a goof wearing that hat. I mean, who wore a feed-style cap with a suit? But all around me, men were wearing them like they’d finally found a club they actually wanted to join.
Skeptics mocked The Hat. They laughed at the idea that a chauffer-driven New York billionaire with a gilded penthouse, who’d never shoveled manure or speared pike from a darkhouse or driven a semi-truck, could think that a red cap would endear him to men who had done all those things. They laughed that parts of his hats were evidently made outside the United States, or that they were made in the U.S. by people he has disparaged.
Many a lesser politician would have slunk away from The Hat and the mockery it engendered. It would have faded into the background as a tried-and-failed campaign prop shunted aside in favor of more traditional apparel like buttons or T-shirts.
Not Trump. He did as he always does in the face of criticism. He doubled down. The Hat took on the air of defiance, a symbol of a man who never backed down, a man who never apologized. A man who made his own atmosphere, critics be damned, using their own momentum against them. Hat sales went through the roof. There were knock-offs and parodies. Finally, the people had a politician who didn’t scurry off at the faintest hint of criticism, but who stood his ground, stood boldly and took it all, mockery and adoration alike. The hats linked the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the barely-making-it, the city slicker and the cowboy.
The mockery continued. He pronounced the books of the Bible “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” instead of “First Corinthians” and “Second Corinthians.” Haw haw! Some Christian. (Never mind that “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” was exactly the pronunciation I and many other kids learned in Sunday School.) He didn’t have a 2016 campaign office in New Jersey. He spelled coffee “cofveve” in a Tweet. Haw haw. A stable genius, all right!
But he continued to gain in the polls, with politicians falling over themselves to support him. And as he kept winning, his critics began to look like wolves unable to take down a majestic stag. They looked like loser wolves.
A Stearns County judge this week sentenced a central Minnesota woman to nearly 22 years in prison for silencing the alarm on an oxygen-monitoring device and allowing her severely disabled child to die.
Elise C. Nelson, 39, was charged with two felony counts in Stearns County District Court following the June 2020 death of 13-year-old Kylie Larson at their home in Paynesville.
Court documents state Nelson was the sole caretaker of Kylie during a weekend in June 2020 and that Nelson was trained to feed and medicate Kylie, as well as suction her tracheotomy as needed.
In court documents, Nelson said she was struggling with depression and admitted to going to the liquor store to buy a 1.75-liter bottle of vodka. She “drank to the point that she blacked out and does not remember what happened for long time periods,” documents state.
The complaint against Nelson states that alarms on Kylie’s pulse oximeter — a device that clips to a finger and assesses breathing by measuring oxygen saturation — started going off on June 20. Court documents state Nelson silenced the alarms multiple times and eventually took the device off; Nelson then called 911 about seven hours after the machine last recorded a pulse.
Kylie had medical problems including chronic respiratory failure and severe developmental delay from a loss of oxygen at birth. But she “enjoyed being outside and moving around, whether it be spinning around in her chair, going for walks with friends and family, or traveling to new places,” her obituary reads.
Nelson pleaded guilty to one felony count of second-degree murder in October 2023 as part of a plea agreement that dismissed one felony count of second-degree manslaughter. She entered a Norgaard plea, allowing her to claim she cannot recall committing the crime but believes there is substantial evidence she would be found guilty at a trial.
In January, Nelson made a motion to withdraw her guilty plea, saying she felt coerced by her previous attorney into signing the document. The state argued her plea was voluntary and informed, and Stearns County Judge Heidi Schultz denied the motion.
A man who was 16 when he fatally shot his victim during a robbery attempt in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood nearly two years ago was sentenced to a 16 1/2 year in prison term.
Judge Sophia Vuelo on Monday sentenced Daeshon Lee Tucker, 18, to 16 1/2 years for fatally shooting 24-year-old Marcus Darnell Miller in 2022. Ramsey County prosecutors charged Tucker with two counts of second degree murder, but he pleaded guilty to a single murder count days before a his jury trial was scheduled to begin.
With credit for time served, he is scheduled for release in 2033 with the remainder of the term on supervised release.
Charging documents say Miller was out getting drinks with his girlfriend in the area of Edmund Avenue W. and Grotto Street N. when Tucker and a driver, wearing ski-masks and armed with handguns, drove over a sidewalk to cut off the couple. Miller’s girlfriend ran to hide behind his vehicle and record what happened. She told investigators that men searched Miller, telling him that he owed people money. Miller turned and ran but the two men shot at him until Miller collapsed near the vehicle.
The shooters fled. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner later confirmed that Miller died from blood loss caused by a gunshot wound to his back.
Investigators tracked and arrested Tucker weeks later through surveillance footage and a palm print which tied him to the crime.
Comments on Tucker’s social media pages at the time also suggested that he killed Miller. One post made days after the murder read: “He tried ta run and he tripped.” The post was followed by a ninja assassin emoji.
“This description is consistent with Miller’s movements as he tried to escape from the shooters,” charging documents said. “Officers commented that they did not think the murder was supposed to happen that way, to which Tucker replied, ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen at all.’”
