Star Tribune
Plea deal rejected for Minneapolis man who sent heavy items off downtown balcony onto cars
A judge Monday rejected a plea agreement struck by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office calling for probation and no prison time for a man who dropped dumbbells, furniture and other items from his ninth-floor balcony onto vehicles passing by his downtown Minneapolis apartment building, causing thousands of dollars in damage.
Michael B. Judy, 30, had agreed in December to plead guilty in District Court to felony first-degree property damage for aiming an array of heavy objects at vehicles driving by the building in the 300 block of S. Washington Avenue in early January 2023. None of the items injured anyone, but multiple vehicles were damaged, charges noted.
The plea agreement between the defense and the prosecution called for three years of probation and for Judy to be sentenced under what is called a stay of imposition. That means the conviction would have been reduced to a misdemeanor once he successfully complied with the terms of his sentence and probation.
However, Judge Amber Brennan “declined to sentence the defendant in accordance with the terms of his plea deal,” said District Court spokesman Matt Lehman. “Mr. Judy then withdrew his plea.”
Nicholas Kimball, spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office, said in an email that the original agreement “was based on Mr. Judy’s successful engagement in treatment and sobriety up to that point along with the fact that he had recently received a [downward] dispositional departure on another case [terroristic threats in Olmsted County] that had occurred after this incident. However, information that came to light related to the defendant’s conduct after the agreement and prior to sentencing ultimately undermined the basis for the agreement.”
Kimball’s email did not elaborate on what Judy did that led to the agreement unraveling. Judy’s attorney did not respond to messages from the Star Tribune.
Judy’s case is now scheduled for trial on July 8.
The downtown incidents came as Judy was facing eviction for failing to pay more than $11,000 in rent since he moved into his unit in July 2022. Court records show he was evicted in late January 2023.
According to the charges:
Five calls were made to 911 from Jan. 3 to Jan. 5 2023 about dumbbell weights, among various large objects, being dropped from an apartment balcony.
On Jan. 4 shortly before midnight, an airport shuttle vehicle with seven passengers was hit on the roof by a 3-pound dumbbell. A city street surveillance camera zoomed in and captured someone on Judy’s balcony about that time. One 911 caller reported nearly being hit by a table and chair.
The surveillance video recorded a man purported to be Judy dropping a wine bottle, a cordless drill, a coffee maker, a coffee pot and a milk jug.
“It appeared to officers that [Judy] was purposely targeting vehicles below as they passed on the street and would wait to throw the items until a vehicle was approaching,” the criminal complaint read. “Officers have serious safety concerns as [the] apartment … is approximately 115 feet up, and a weighted object falling from that distance could lead to a risk of great bodily harm or death to passing motorists, [a] bicyclist or pedestrians.”
Judy’s criminal history in Minnesota spans his entire adult life and includes pleading guilty in 2012 to drive-by shooting and property damage in connection with being one of three people accused of shooting BBs at dozens of car windows and a home in Rochester. He’s also been convicted numerous times for domestic assault as well as for terroristic threats, theft, harassment, indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
“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.
