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Hundreds of St. Paul students ‘unify’ on special field trip
Building relationships and understanding were the goals of an event involving hundreds of St. Paul students.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Around 500 middle and high school students from almost a dozen St. Paul Public Schools spent the day at the University of St. Thomas’ Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex for a field trip they’d never been on before.
They’re enrolled in a ‘unified’ physical education program through the Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools. This is the first school year SPPS is offering it, and teachers said the rec center field trip Thursday was for students to develop friendships that can last outside of class.
Michelle Mercado is a leader in the district’s occupational therapy, physical therapy, adapted P.E. and music and art therapy programs.
“Into the lunchroom, into the community, into after school activities,” Mercado said. “I have a child with special needs who is 18, and it’s really important for me to have him have relationships with other kids, and I want that for students in St. Paul Schools.”
Highland Park High School freshman Ray Gaddy and senior Ananyia Kebede are already friends. They have three classes together. While Gaddy prefers baseball and basketball, Kebede plays on the varsity football team.
“I’ll be seeing him around, making sure he gets to the right class,” Kebede said.
“And we share jokes,” Gaddy added. “We actually eat at the same diner together.”
Leaders set up activities including lawn games, a silent disco and – a gym class favorite – the multicolor parachute.
“Cornhole, bowling, bocce ball,” Mercado said, “things that maybe kids could do outside of school, or join some community groups or bowling leagues.”
They also discussed how schools can become more inclusive for when they are there.
“I met a few new people here and I found a few old friends that I knew since elementary,” Kebede said. “If people were more active and like spending together with each other instead of being on their phones.”
“Yeah, like this event,” Gaddy added.
Demaya Walton is the director of Unified Champion Schools.
“The benefit of Unified programming is really to improve school culture,” Walton said. “When students are happy to come to school, you see better graduation rates, you see more unified activity happening organically so it’s less on the administrators leading the work but the students.”
Mercado says the program will continue with more events, but says the scale may not be as large. This time, around 75 educators accompanied the hundreds of students to the university.
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Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, filed a third petition seeking her release from a psychiatric hospital.
WAUKESHA, Wis. — A Wisconsin woman accused of stabbing her classmate to please horror character Slender Man more than a decade ago asked a judge again Friday to release her from a psychiatric hospital.
Morgan Geyser, who is now 22 years old, filed a petition with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren seeking her release from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. The petition marks the third time in the last two years she has asked Bohren to let her out of the facility.
She withdrew her first petition two months after filing it in 2022. Bohren denied her second request this past April, saying she remains a risk to the public.
Geyser’s attorney, Anthony Cotton, didn’t immediately respond to email and telephone messages Friday morning.
Geyser and Anissa Weier were 12 in 2014 when they lured Payton Leutner to a Waukesha park after a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier egged her on. Leutner barely survived.
The girls later told investigators they wanted to earn the right to be servants of the fictional Slender Man and that they feared he would harm their families if they didn’t carry out the attack.
Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide and was sent to the psychiatric institute because of mental illness. Weier pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree intentional homicide and was also sent to the psychiatric center. She was granted a release in 2021 to live with her father and was ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
According to KARE 11 Meteorologist John Zeigler, trees between central Minnesota and just south of the Iron Range are in peak color condition.
MINNEAPOLIS — If you’re planning a trip north of the Twin Cities this weekend, you’re in for a fortune of fall foliage.
According to KARE 11 Meteorologist John Zeigler, trees between central Minnesota and just south of the Iron Range are in peak color condition.
“If you’re around the Twin Cities, there hasn’t been a lot of changeover yet,” Zeigler said. “So, this is the changeover happening now north of Saint Cloud. If you go up toward the Iron Range here, I actually think it might be a little bit too late.”
Zeigler said to hit spots like the Brainerd Lakes Area, in addition to cities near Duluth.
“If I was traveling to the north and I want to see the perfect colors, I would go to Two Harbors,” he said. “I would go to Duluth [or] Brainerd Lakes Area is great.”
Zeigler said if peak leaf peeping is what you’re after, Saturday will be the warmer of the two days, but Sunday is also an option — as long as you bust out your winter garb and bundle up.
“Sunday is not a bad day, but look at the 40s in Duluth — even in Hayward we’re in the forties,” Zeigler said. “Maybe a little bit of rain during the morning hours and breezy, so if you’re gonna be out there on Sunday, 40s, put your jacket on. Actually, I would pack a bigger coat heading to the north.”
Zeigler said it will still be a few weeks before we hit a peak in the metro and other communities in southern Minnesota.
KARE 11 will continue to update peak fall color progress. You can also check in with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Fall Color Finder Map on the agency’s website.
The charges are connected to a fatal incident in which Thompson is accused of hitting a vehicle with his SUV, resulting in the deaths of five young women.
ST PAUL, Minn. — A jury has found Derrick Thompson guilty of drug and firearm charges stemming from a high-speed crash that claimed the lives of five young women in Minneapolis.
Thompson faced three charges – possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime.
The trial lasted less than a week. On Tuesday, jurors watched a violent and graphic video that showed Thompson’s rented SUV running a red light at high speed and crashing into a vehicle waiting at a stoplight. All five passengers inside the car that was struck were killed.
But both prosecutors and Thompson’s defense team told jurors it was not the most important piece of evidence they’d see in the case, urging them not to attempt to analyze the crash itself.
“This is a case about an armed drug dealer,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Calhoun-Lopez told the panel. “We are here today because (the) defendant crashed that car carrying 2,000 fentanyl pills, cocaine, fentanyl powder, and a loaded gun.”
Calhoun-Lopez explained Derrick Thompson’s subsequent fleeing and lying to police following the deadly crash proves the gun and drugs were his. In addition, DNA testing links Thompson to the items.
But the defense offered the jury an alternative theory that was absent from the public realm until recently when it was revealed that Thompson had a passenger in the rental car – his brother Damarco Thompson.
Thompson’s attorney Matthew Deates told jurors that Damarco is the flashier of the Thompson brothers and that he likes colorful, flashy things like the blue cap police found on the passenger side of the Escalade. Deates added that the colorful wrap on the handgun matches those tastes and that the spot where police found the bag containing the gun and drugs also points to the defendant’s brother. The bag was located under Damarco’s blue hat.
“That is the definition of confirmation bias. It’s tunnel vision. It does not make it right. This caused the government to charge the wrong person. But you – as the jury – gets to weigh the evidence and decide,” Deates said in his opening statement.
Thompson’s legal woes are far from over – he faces five counts of third-degree murder and five counts of criminal vehicular homicide at the state level.
