Star Tribune
Couple arrested in MN, part of ring that took Lululemon for $1M in thefts
An East Coast couple has been arrested and charged in Ramsey County with being part of a theft operation that is suspected of stealing roughly $1 million in goods across several states from the high-end women’s athletic wear retailer Lululemon.
Jadion Anthony Richards, 44, and Akwele Nickeisha Lawes-Richards, 45, both of Danbury, Conn., were charged Friday in Ramsey County District Court with organized retail theft in connection with crimes that spanned more than two months until their arrests Thursday.
Both appeared in court Monday and remain jailed ahead of hearings scheduled for Dec. 16. Richards’ bail was set at $100,000 and Lawes-Richards’ at $30,000. Attorneys for each defendant were not immediately available to respond to the allegations.
The County Attorney’s Office said this the first case it has prosecuted under a state statute enacted into law in May 2023 that is aimed at addressing organized retail theft.
In a nod to the work of the Roseville Police Department and its new retail crime unit, as well as other law enforcement agencies, “these individuals accused of this massive retail theft operation have been caught,” read a statement from Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the County Attorney’s Office. “We will do everything in our power to hold these defendants accountable, and continue to work with our law enforcement partners and retail merchants to put a stop to retail theft in our community.”
According to the charges:
A retail crime investigator learned from police in Roseville that Richards, Lawes-Richards and an unidentified accomplice stole 45 items worth nearly $5,000 on Wednesday from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.
Police in Woodbury caught up to Lawes-Richards and Richards at the Lululemon in Woodbury and arrested them. Richards declined to speak with law enforcement, and Lawes-Richards denied stealing anything from the Lulelemon in Rosedale Center.
Star Tribune
St. Paul shooting victim dies from injuries, shortly after city leaders make plea to public about gun violence
A 24-year-old St. Paul man who was shot in the head earlier this month died from his injuries Friday, shortly after a range of city and community leaders made a public plea about gun violence in the state’s capital.
The homicide marks the city’s 10th since mid-September – eight of which were committed by firearms, according to a Star Tribune database.
On Monday, police announced the death of Dejuan Hemphill, 24, of St. Paul, who was found shot Nov. 5 just before 5 p.m. in the area of Rice Street and University Avenue West in the city’s Frogtown neighborhood.
No arrests have been made. The Star Tribune was unable to locate members of Hemphill’s family Monday.
“We know there are folks who carry because they want to feel safe,” said Mayor Melvin Carter, who added that St. Paul police clear almost all its homicide investigations. “We can keep people safe. St Paul is not a place to fire a gun.”
In the last two months, St. Paul has seen 10 homicides committed in the city, which includes a fatal police shooting Nov. 9 and other incidents that involved domestic violence, robbery and drugs, according to Police Chief Axel Henry.
“They cross the spectrum and so they don’t all fall in neat categories,” he said. “But they almost all fall in this category: they involve guns and they involve terrible decisions and they involve a level of violence we can’t accept in our city.”
Star Tribune
Attorney for one man charged in migrant family’s death on Canada-Minnesota border says he was duped
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. – Steve Shand was just a cab driver who was tricked into picking up migrants without knowing they were part of a smuggling operation, his defense attorney said on the first day of his trial in federal court Monday.
“Mr. Shand did not agree to participate in any crime,” assistant federal defender Lisa Lopez said in her opening arguments.
She said that co-defendant Harshkumar Patel recruited Shand many times as a driver for groups of people in Florida, where they lived and met, before asking him to start transporting passengers in the Midwest. The first such trip in December 2021 – which prosecutors say was the start of a conspiracy to illegally bring a series of Indian nationals over the northern border – took place after Patel directed Shand to pick up some people at Love’s Travel Stop in Drayton, N.D. and bring them to Chicago, according to Lopez.
The town wasn’t on the Canadian border; in fact, Lopez noted, it was 30 miles away. She said Shand found nothing particularly suspicious about the job, “and that’s how Mr. Patel sort of eased Mr. Shand into these out-of-state trips. That’s how he had him become an unknowing participant in his scheme because that first trip raised no red flags for Mr. Shand.”
But prosecutors said the two men on trial were so driven to make money off desperate migrants over the course of four subsequent trips that they continued with plans to have a group of 11 people illegally cross the Canadian border into Minnesota during a subzero blizzard on the night of January 19, 2022, leading to a family of four freezing to death.
“This case is about these two men putting profits over people’s lives,” said federal prosecutor Ryan Lipes, turning and pointing at the defendants.
The deaths of Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife Vaishaliben, 37; their daughter Vihangi, 11; and son Dharmik, 3, drew international attention and spawned investigations in the U.S., Canada and the family’s native Indian state of Gujarat. (The victims are not related to Harshkumar Patel, who is also from Gujarat.)
Shand and Patel were indicted in Minnesota for conspiracy to transport and bring unauthorized immigrants to the U.S., causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy and attempted transportation and aiding and abetting transportation of aliens for commercial advantage and private financial gain.
A 24-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a car along a highway in Maplewood on Monday morning.
The crash occurred on southbound Hwy. 61 near Hwy. 36 at 5:45 a.m., according to the State Patrol. The agency did not detail how the crash happened in a news release and did not immediately return a request for more information.
The driver of the vehicle was a 30-year-old man from Maplewood, the state patrol said. No arrests were announced.
