Star Tribune
Man gets more than 21 years for part in fatal crash during rolling shootout in downtown Minneapolis
A man received a sentence topping 21 years Thursday for taking part in a rolling gun battle on a downtown Minneapolis street that led to one of the two vehicles hitting and killing a young woman standing at a corner with her scooter.
Christopher L. Walker, 35, of Fridley, was sentenced in Hennepin County District Court after pleading guilty to third-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder in connection with the death of Autumn Rose Merrick, 18, of Minneapolis on Oct. 6, 2021, in the North Loop. Merrick was killed after leaving work.
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Walker is expected to serve the first 14 years of his 21⅔-year term in prison and the balance on supervised release.
Co-defendant Marvel G. Williams, 35, of St. Paul, was sentenced in March to a term of 24¼ years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and a gun possession count.
“This incident was extraordinarily dangerous and violent,” County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement. “Mr. Walker’s conduct took the life of one person and endangered the lives of countless others as he drove erratically and at high speeds through Minneapolis. When necessary, we will seek lengthy periods of incapacitation to keep the public safe, and that is what occurred in this case.”
According to the charges:
Police responded to gunfire shortly after 11 p.m. near N. 5th Street and 6th Avenue, where officers soon saw a black Range Rover speeding into the intersection and then heard a crash. The Range Rover had hit a light pole and caught fire. The other vehicle, a silver Dodge Durango, had rammed into a building.
Walker, Williams and another person in the Range Rover were seriously hurt.
A friend with Merrick said the two were riding scooters to the Holiday gas station at that intersection and waiting on the corner when the Durango sped toward them. The friend said Merrick was struck, pushed into a building and trapped beneath the vehicle. Officers saw two bullet holes in the Durango.
Video surveillance from a nearby business appeared to show the Range Rover chasing the Durango just before they crashed.
The driver of the Durango, Larvell Elmore, 37, of St. Peter, Minn., was sentenced to a five-year term after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun.
Vischer said today’s college students have a greater financial need than students did 10, 25 or 50 years ago.
“So that put some pressure on [us] regarding the question, ‘Will we be able to keep St. Thomas accessible and affordable?’” Vischer said. “A gift like this is a resounding ‘yes’ to that question.”
Vischer said St. Thomas was deferring to the family’s wishes in not disclosing the amount.
The family’s foundation also provided the main donation for the university’s Schoenecker Center, which opened last spring. The 130,000-square-foot center is dedicated to studying STEAM (science, technology, arts, engineering and mathematics). Other notable campus buildings bearing the family’s name include the Schoenecker Arena and the law library in downtown Minneapolis.
In honor of the latest gift, the Tommie North residence hall will be renamed Guy and Barbara Schoenecker Residence Hall North. A celebration on campus was held Thursday.
“St. Thomas had a big impact on his life,” Larry Schoenecker said of his father, who graduated in 1949. “He loved the school.”
Star Tribune
Minnesota’s top elections official says ‘glitch’ in automatic voter registration system is fixed
ST. PAUL, Minn. — While there was a ‘’glitch’’ in Minnesota’s new automatic voter registration system, Secretary of State Steve Simon said Thursday that nobody who was ineligible voted in the August primary as a result of the problem.
That had been one of the questions that Minnesota Republicans last week said was still hanging after Simon and other state officials said they had made changes to the system after flagging around 1,000 potentially problematic registrations.
Minnesota’s new system went live in April. Residents who apply for state-issued IDs such as driver’s licenses are now automatically registered to vote without having to opt in, assuming they’re eligible to vote. And 16- and 17-year-olds can preregister to vote once they turn 18.
After discovering documentation problems, Simon said, workers at the Department of Public Safety, which issues driver’s licenses, then did a hand review of all those automatic registrations, which totaled around 100,000. Out of an ”abundance of caution,” he said, about 1,000 registrations were deactivated. Those people will be notified that they have to reregister.
”The law is crystal clear. The law says this has to be airtight,” Simon said at a news conference ahead of Friday’s start of early voting in Minnesota. The state, along with Virginia and South Dakota, will be the first in the country to begin in-person voting in the 2024 presidential election.
Two people at the Department of Public Safety, not just one, will now review every application to make sure everything is in order before the applicants are added to the voter rolls, Simon said. He said that should prevent any ineligible people from being improperly automatically registered and allowed to vote in November.
”I have every reason to believe that these steps that the Department of Public Safety has adopted will lead to that outcome. In other words, that we won’t have the kind of glitch we saw, and then we won’t have someone inadvertently or otherwise who’s not supposed to vote voting,” he said.
The lead Republican on the Minnesota Senate Elections Committee, Sen. Mark Koran, of North Branch, said he appreciated the changes but called for stronger checks for all voters.
With the support of several local businesspeople, Selvaggio started Advocate Services, Inc. to lobby for civil rights and equal housing and protest the Vietnam War. About 100 people sent Selvaggio $2 to $25 a month to cover his work and living expenses.
After a speech in 1971 at St. Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis, he met Ted Pouliot, who operated an artificial flower and interior design business. They developed the idea of rehabbing deteriorating homes in the inner city, which evolved into PPL.
Two years after Selvaggio divorced Yeager, he married Rosario Escanan, a Filipino human rights activist who he helped immigrate to the U.S. at a time when the Philippines was under martial law. “Two of my friends disappeared and I assumed they were killed,” said Escanan.
Selvaggio founded the One Percent Club to recruit wealthy Minnesotans to pledge 1% of their annual income to charities of their choice. He helped Steve Rothschild start Twin Cities R!SE, an antipoverty program, in 1993, and he started MicroGrants, a nonprofit that makes small grants to low-income “people of potential,” in 2008.
Rothschild, a retired General Mills executive vice president, said Selvaggio “saw needs that weren’t being addressed and he did something about it.”
Selvaggio suffered from several age-related ailments and had recently decided to stop eating, drinking and taking medications “in an effort to go out on his own terms,” said his son, Sam, of Minneapolis.
