Star Tribune
Killings near Minneapolis homeless encampment weren’t random
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced Monday that her office is bringing additional murder charges against Joshua Anthony Jones after he allegedly killed two men and shot two others near a homeless encampment in Minneapolis two weeks ago.
Jones, 36, of Bemidji, now stands charged with two counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder and three counts of illegal firearms possession from the roving attacks that occurred over nearly 15 hours on Sept. 18.
While the shootings were in proximity to a homeless encampment in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, Moriarty said it does not appear that the victims were living at the encampment or that Jones was trying to kill people living at the encampment.
“He did actually appear to have known the people that he targeted,” Moriarty said at a news conference. She added that a specific motive for the killings remains under investigation.
The two men killed were Roland Scott Littleowl, 20, and Robert Milton Brown, 39, of Minneapolis.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office provided a timeline of the allegations against Jones:
At 4:39 a.m., Jones walked into an alley on the 2500 block of 17th Avenue S. and shot Littleowl and another man in the head and shot at a third person but missed. Littleowl died at the scene, the other shooting victim survived. At 4:21 p.m. Jones is seen on surveillance video walking up to Brown on the 2500 block of Bloomington Avenue S. and shooting him in the head. Brown also died at the scene. At 7:19 p.m., Jones approached a fifth victim near the intersection of 24th Street and 18th Avenue S. and shot at him multiple times, hitting him in the shoulder.
A short time later, Jones was arrested.
A pilot landed a plane on a highway north of St. Cloud on Monday afternoon after the engine failed, according to the Minnesota State Patrol.
The State Patrol responded to the emergency landing around 1:30 p.m., when the small private plane touched down on Hwy. 27 between Little Falls and Pierz in Morrison County, Sgt. Jesse Grabow said in a social media post.
An initial report found that the engine failed and that the pilot, the lone occupant, decided to land it on the highway, Grabow said. Once the airplane landed, the pilot steered it into a ditch to avoid traffic, Grabow said. A photo posted by Grabow showed the right wing sustained some damage, and that it came to a stop in a grassy area.
There were no injuries and the incident remains under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Fans of country music superstars Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks may want to take note: The former Hillcrest golf course now known as The Heights not only was the site of their latest volunteer turn for Habitat for Humanity. It may also prove to be the start of marital, um, friction.
“I think 17 years of [volunteering for] Habitat has been a lot easier than 19 years of being married,” Brooks said, chuckling as he looked sideways at his wife.
Lucky for Brooks, Yearwood appeared not to take offense. The work they’re doing, she said, is vital.
“We’ve known since day one, it’s a great organization because it really is about the right thing — infrastructure in our country,” she said. “Should we help our homebuilding? That is such a priority in our minds. It’s a crisis.”
Monday, at St. Paul’s far northeast corner, the Grammy-winning power couple joined the kickoff of Habitat’s weeklong Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project. The project will attract 4,000 volunteers to build 30 Habitat homes at the 112-acre mixed-use development. Habitat will build a total of 147 owner-occupied affordable homes and The Heights will eventually include 1,000 units of housing and 1,000 new jobs.
Volunteers build houses during Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s 2024 Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project at the site of the former Hillcrest Golf Course. (Leila Navidi)
Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, said Brooks and Yearwood’s involvement in Habitat projects from Colorado to Florida, Canada to Haiti, provides an unmistakable boost to its efforts worldwide.
“It’s tremendously important,” he said. “In the same way that the world found out about Habitat because President and Mrs. Carter got involved as volunteers, starting their 40-year run with us, I think when people with huge social capital lend their celebrity, what happens is we get more media attention and we get awareness, and that allows more people to get involved.”
The Carter Work Project runs through Friday. Officials said more than 1,000 people will volunteer each day, 4,000 total. Yearwood and Brooks will be working right alongside them. On Monday, the site was abuzz with workers climbing scaffolding, framing walls and driving heavy equipment.
A 42-year-old Eagan woman who used money meant to feed needy children during the pandemic on real estate and high-end vehicle purchases pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud charges.
Kawsar Jama became the 22nd person to admit to their role in the $250 million federal child nutrition fraud case that has led to the indictments of 70 people since 2022. She did so days after a pair of co-defendants in her case made pleas of their own last week.
Jama’s indictment, returned last year as part of a second wave of charges in the sprawling case, alleged a $3.7 million scheme to falsely claim that she served 1.46 million meals to children while under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future between September 2020 and February 2022.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger singled out Jama’s case in a March 2023 news conference announcing charges against her and nine others. Luger said Jama used phony invoices, and none of the children’s names on reimbursement forms matched children enrolled in school locally. Jama allegedly reached out to a friend for help inventing new names as the scheme wore on, and she did not operate a physical location despite claiming be serving meals at one.
Prosecutors said Jama claimed to operate federal food aid sites in Pelican Rapids, Burnsville and Minneapolis. In Pelican Rapids, Jama allegedly claimed to serve 2,560 meals daily to needy children — despite the town having a total population of about 2,500. Some of the money Jama received from the Federal Child Nutrition Program was instead used to buy real estate and vehicles that included a Tesla Model X and Infiniti QX56 SUV.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel, who is presiding over the cases, did not set a sentencing date for Jama. Jama remains out on supervised release ahead of sentencing.
