Star Tribune
MN gun owner charged with manslaughter after boy shot himself in head
A 3-year-old child shot himself in the head and died after a Minneapolis man allegedly left his gun unattended on a kitchen island because he was in a rush and needed to go to the bathroom.
Elliott Staples III, 30, was charged with second-degree manslaughter on Thursday in Hennepin County District Court. The child, Jajuan Robinson, was found on the afternoon of Oct. 21 in the Hook and Ladder Apartments in the 2300 block of Jefferson Street NE. He died at HCMC a short time later.
In an interview with WCCO in October, Robinson’s mother, Charlotte Williams, said she was at work and left her son with a babysitter. “I left my baby with somebody I thought I trusted. Somebody he was supposed to be safe with.”
An online fundraiser to support Williams said Robinson was, “full of life—silly, energetic, and always playful. He adored Spider-Man, loved dinosaurs, and dreamed of becoming a construction worker because of his fascination with excavators.”
According to the charges:
Staples III told investigators that he had taken his gun out of the holster that he wears on his hip. He said he normally places the gun on top of his refrigerator but was in a rush and so he placed it on the center island in his kitchen.
While he was using the bathroom, he heard a gunshot. He ran out to find the boy on the ground in the kitchen, bleeding from the head. Staples III then grabbed the gun and placed it on top of the refrigerator.
Staples III was the only adult in the apartment at the time of the shooting. He has no serious criminal history in Minnesota.
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
