Star Tribune
Prison for man who smuggled Minnesota record amount of fentanyl in stuffed toy animals
A St. Paul man has received a prison term topping 13 years for orchestrating what investigators said was the biggest fentanyl pill bust in Minnesota history, carried out by several accomplices who mailed the deadly opioid in stuffed toy animals from Arizona to the Twin Cities.
Cornell Montez Chandler, 25, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in connection with the operation that ran from August 2022 to February 2023.
After serving 13⅓ years in prison, Chandler will be on supervised release for another five years.
One of the investigating agencies, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said the capture of the unprecedented haul totaled 280,000 pills. They weighed more than 66 pounds and had a street value of roughly $2.2 million.
From 2022 to 2023, Minnesota saw an 8% decrease in drug overdose deaths from 1,384 to 1,274 deaths, according to preliminary data from the state last month. Though the numbers are preliminary, 2023 likely marks the first time since 2018 that Minnesota has seen a drop in this category.
“Chandler wasn’t just part of that epidemic; he fueled it,” prosecutors wrote to the court ahead of sentencing as part of their push for a sentence of 15⅔ years for Chandler, whose criminal history in Minnesota also includes convictions for first-degree robbery, fleeing police, drug possession and drunken driving.
“He not only traveled to Arizona with other co-defendants, where he personally participated in the packaging and shipping process,” the filing continued, “but he also organized and directed other defendants with shipping and trafficking information, retrieved or received packages from the recipients in the Twin Cities, and coordinated the distribution of fentanyl for further trafficking through several co-defendants.”
The defense asked that Chandler get 10 years in prison, noting he was exposed to substance abuse in his home as a child, and that he suffered lingering trauma from when he was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet at age 20.
DULUTH – A man who police say killed his family before shooting himself last week was approved for a gun permit in September, two months after he was hospitalized following an incident where he had held a knife to his wife’s throat.
Anthony Nephew, 46, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound alongside his wife, Kathryn Ramsland, 45, and son Oliver Nephew, 7, at the family’s house at 4401 West Sixth Street, across from Denfeld High School. He is suspected of first killing his ex-wife, Erin Abramson, 47, and their son Jacob Nephew, 15, who were found dead at their home on Tacony Street, less than a mile away.
Nephew applied for and received a gun permit on Sept. 9, according to a search warrant filed in St. Louis County. The filing, alongside incident reports, indicate Nephew had mounting concerns about the country’s political future.
Ramsland called local authorities on July 3 to report that Anthony Nephew had attacked her and was suicidal. He was cooperative when officers arrived and admitted to holding a knife to his wife’s neck. He told a police officer that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in the past five years and had been going downhill. “He had a med change a few days ago and since then voices have been telling him [President Donald] Trump is going to take over the world and he needs to kill his family to protect them,” according to an incident report.
Nephew said at the time that he believed Russians had control of his mind since he was 6 years old. He said that if Trump took over control, to “put a bullet in his head and the head of his families.” Nephew spent the night at Aspirus St. Luke’s hospital, according to the search warrant.
Nephew had spoken openly, both on Facebook and in a column in the Duluth News Tribune, about mental health struggles.
On Nov. 7, Duluth police responded to a welfare check at Abramson’s home after she didn’t show up for work. A coworker with the city of Superior said this was out of character and that Abramson had recently said her ex-husband had been “going off the deep end,” according to the search warrant. It was then that officers found her and their son dead.
Anthony Nephew was found dead alongside Ramsland and their son Oliver in the family’s primary bedroom.
The largest landlord in Willmar has filed a lawsuit against the city and its staff, accusing council members of being hostile to the company.
The property owner, Suite Liv’n, said the city had “schemed” to shut down its operations, said the suit, filed Nov. 5. The lawsuit says emails by city council obtained via data requests show that city council members had hoped to revoke the company’s rental license.
Leslie Valiant, city administrator for Willmar, declined to comment on the litigation, other than to say the matter has been referred to legal counsel and an insurer.
Dean Zuleger, chief operating officer of Suite Liv’n, has in the past threatened litigation against Willmar, accusing the city of bias and rental inspector Ryan Tillemans of working for another owner of rental units, in what it said was a conflict of interest, the West Central Tribune reported in 2023.
The company in Willmar has had a reputation of allowing properties to fall into disrepair; the West Central Tribune reported finding black mold and standing water in some buildings in 2022.
This was due to a “property management company that didn’t do their job,” Zuleger said in a recent interview with the Star Tribune, adding that Suite Liv’n now has on-site management.
In 2022, Suite Liv’n agreed to give refunds to 877 households after a settlement totaling approximately $50,000 to $60,000 with the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office. The housing company had improperly imposed a utility surcharge, a statement by Ellison’s office said at the time.
Suite Liv’n is the city’s largest landlord, owning about 25% of multifamily housing units in Willmar, a city of 21,000 about 90 miles west of Minneapolis. The company on its website describes itself as Christian and evangelical-based.
Skygazers in Minnesota and around the U.S. will enjoy one more chance to see a supermoon before the end of the year.
The supermoon, also known as the Beaver Moon, will appear fullest on Friday, November 15, at 3:29 p.m CST., NASA said. That’s before sunset in Minnesota, but the moon will appear full for about three days around this time, until a few hours before sunrise on Sunday morning.
The stunning moon occurs when it is as close to Earth in its lunar orbit as it ever gets, while also being full. Supermoons only happen three or four times per year, and always appear consecutively.
The name Beaver Moon comes from the Maine Farmers’ Almanac, which began publishing Native American names for full moons in the 1930s. NASA said Mid-fall during the November full moon was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze to ensure a supply of warm winter furs, NASA said. Another theory is the name comes from the busy pre-winter period for beavers, according to the space agency.
November’s full moon is the last of four consecutive supermoons, slightly closer to Earth and brighter than the first of the four supermoons in mid-August.
The next supermoon won’t be until October 2025.
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