Star Tribune
Man charged with detaining, sexually assaulting 15-year-old in St. Paul
A St. Paul man has been charged with detaining a teen in his apartment and sexually assaulting her for days.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged Sebastian Jenkins, 52, with first- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct and false imprisonment on Monday. Jenkins reportedly kept the teen in his St. Paul apartment between Jan. 30 and Feb. 2, preventing her from leaving while sexually assaulting them at least a dozen times.
Another 15-year-old, who was reported missing, witnessed the assault — and prosecutors say Jenkins also coerced that teen into sex.
According to the charging documents and search warrants:
Officers were called Feb. 2 to Wendy’s on University Avenue West for reports of a potential kidnapping and sexual assault. There they met a 15-year-old girl who appeared “highly traumatized.” She had burn marks on her stomach, fresh slash marks on her right wrist, and told officers that she was kept captive and sexually assaulted.
The girl explained that she and another 15-year-old teen, identified as AN, ran away from a shelter program that provides supportive services for at-risk youth. The victim’s mother believes they left at around 10 p.m. on Jan. 30. The teens met Jenkins and another man at a gas station, and the men offered to party and get them high. The teens rode in the men’s car and smoked methamphetamine before going to Jenkins’ apartment.
They all had sex, the girl told police, before Jenkins pulled her aside and said ” I don’t think I want you guys to leave.” She responded “OK” because she did not think he was serious. The next day she said Jenkins got her and AN high with meth again before having sex with them, burning her with a lighter and meth bubbles during intercourse.
Although the girl tried to leave the apartment, Jenkins would not let her leave. She took Jenkins’ phone and tried messaging people for a ride, but said that Jenkins found out and yelled at her. That’s when the girl said she cut herself with one of his kitchen knives. The act “freaked him out” and prompted Jenkins to walk her out of his apartment. Surveillance video showed him walking out with both teens and returning with AN.
She then called her mother and told her she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted multiple times, and that AN was still in the apartment.
The first teen estimates that Jenkins sexually assaulted her a dozen times during the four days she was held captive in his apartment. She told police that sex would sometimes begin with her consent, but said Jenkins would refuse to stop when she told him to.
Officers went to Jenkins’ apartment within an hour of the teen’s escape. He refused to open the door without a warrant, and said he was the only occupant inside. Authorities entered after returning with a valid warrant, finding Jenkins inside with AN and numerous items that included a black and silver knife, four comforters, and multiple backpacks with personal items.
Jenkins was arrested, telling police that he met AN at a gas station and allowed her to stay because he had been homeless before. He admitted to being with a friend at the time, but claimed that he forgot their name. Authorities are still searching for that man. Jenkins denied using drugs or having sex with AN, adding that nobody else was in his apartment while the teen was there.
He asked for a lawyer after investigators pressed further about whether another girl was with AN at Jenkins’ apartment.
In her interview with police, AN confirmed that she and the other girl ran away rom the shelter on Jan. 30 before meeting Jenkins and his friend. AN said she and the other teen were provided with meth, cocaine and alcohol while at the apartment, estimating that she had sex with Jenkins at least five times. She added that she was free to leave the apartment if she wanted to.
Jenkins’ criminal history in Minnesota does not include previous instances of sexual assault and is limited to misdemeanor convictions for domestic assault and possession of burglary tools. Prosecutors asked Judge Sophia Vuelo to set Jenkins’ bail at $60,000. His next court appearance is scheduled for Feb. 28.
The sexual assault case is among those charged by this office this year, which also include a Blaine woman for sexually assaulting youth hockey teammates visiting from Colorado, and charged a St. Paul man for drugging and sexually assaulting multiple victims he met on a dating app. Their court proceedings are expected to continue in the coming months.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
