A St. Paul skydiving instructor had anything but a soft landing last month after allegedly attempting to parachute from atop a St. Croix County, Wis., cellphone tower.

Court documents filed this week say the man’s parachute got hung up on power lines on the way down, snagging him and causing him to be shocked. He survived the July 29 incident, but was later charged with two felonies stemming from the failed attempt, which left 127 customers without power for nearly two hours.

Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Karl Anthony Lips-Eakins, 44, with criminal damage and criminal trespass to energy-provider property. He was due to appear in court Thursday, but the hearing was rescheduled for Oct. 16.

The incident happened less than a month after Lips-Eakins and two others were arrested after allegedly parachuting from a cell tower in Wyoming, Minn.

According to a criminal complaint:

A St. Croix County sheriff’s deputy was called at 12:27 a.m. to Deerwood Drive and Tower Road in the town of Troy for a complaint of suspicious activity.

The deputy arrived to find a St. Croix Electric employee fixing a line that appeared to have been damaged and left dozens of customers without power.

The deputy got word from dispatchers that a caller had driven past the cell tower and spotted a parachute hanging from an electrical line. The witness reported seeing a “lifeless” man being carried to a nearby vehicle.

The witness followed the vehicle to Hudson Hospital, where he reported what he had seen.

The deputy went to the hospital and asked if anyone had been recently hospitalized for an electric shock or parachuting accident. He was directed to Lips-Eakins’ hospital room.

The deputy interviewed Lips-Eakins, who first denied parachuting from the tower. The deputy then pointed to the parachuting gear in the hospital room.

“Oh, I forgot that was in here,” Lips-Eakins told the deputy, according to the complaint. “Yes, I did jump from the tower.”

Lips-Eakins said he is a skydiving instructor at Twin Cities Skydiving in Baldwin, Wis. The office manager confirmed Friday that he is a part-time instructor there.

Asked by the deputy what happened, Lips-Eakins said he hopped a fence, climbed the tower and leapt from it. The parachute didn’t fully open, he told the officer, causing it to get caught on the power line.

Lips-Eakins was later taken to Regions Hospital for his injuries.

St. Croix Electric later told deputies that the outage affected 127 customers and lasted at least an hour and 45 minutes. Wages for utility workers sent to repair the line totaled about $1,750 in overtime, the deputy learned.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas has condemned the swastika carved by unknown vandals into a putting green at the Crystal Lake Golf Club earlier this week.

Mowers at the Lakeville course noticed the Nazi symbol early Monday, according to www.golf.com, and the damage was documented, reported to the police and repaired before the club opened, according to a statement by the club.

“Perpetrators of these types of incidents are intent on spreading a message of hate and challenging the openness and respectful atmosphere of our community. Collectively, we reject these chilling acts and the hate they represent,” the council said in a prepared statement Thursday.

Club officials issued a statement saying they were “hurt and saddened” someone would vandalize the club. “We, in no way, stand for anything remotely related to that symbol, and we hope that swift justice is brought to the perpetrator(s) of this crime.”

“This hateful message does not represent the views of Lakeville residents and will not be tolerated,” the department statement said.

Police asked residents to be on the lookout for anyone causing damage and to call investigators with any information at 952-985-2800.

DULUTH, Minn. — Three defendants have been indicted on first-degree murder charges in the February slaying of a Duluth college student who was the son of a St. Paul police officer.

A St. Louis County grand jury on Thursday returned the indictments against Deandre Demetrius Davenport, 21; Noah Duane Baker, 20; and Noah Anthony Charles King, 19.

The three already were among five suspects charged in connection with the shooting death of 22-year-old William Andrew Grahek. But the trio will now be facing mandatory life sentences, if convicted.

The indictment charges each defendant with two counts of first-degree murder. The new charges accuse them of causing Grahek’s death while committing aggravated robbery and burglary.

In Minnesota, only a grand jury can bring first-degree murder charges.

Grahek, who grew up in Centerville and graduated from Centennial High School, was the son of St. Paul police Sgt. Jon Grahek. He was studying computer science and criminology at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he was a junior.

Grahek was shot twice inside his east side Duluth residence on Feb. 14 during what authorities have described as an attempted robbery of drugs and cash.

Investigators have said Davenport, King and Baker walked to Grahek’s house from King’s residence — just across an alley. They allegedly left from the rear of King’s house, wearing dark clothing and armed with a Glock 9 mm handgun, and entered the lower level of Grahek’s house.

Authorities said Grahek’s roommates upstairs heard yelling and the words “get down on the ground” just prior to hearing gunshots. The witnesses told police that Grahek refused and was shot by Davenport, according to criminal complaints filed in March.

Two other defendants were not suspected of entering the house and were not included in the indictment.

Xavier Alfred Haywood, 26, is accused of instructing Davenport, King and Noah Baker to rob Grahek, whom he knew to have “large amounts of cash and controlled substances” in a safe inside his house, and harboring them after the heist was botched. He is charged with aiding an offender to avoid arrest.

Tara Rai Baker, 23, the sister of Noah Baker and the girlfriend of Davenport, is accused of being a getaway driver. She is charged with aiding and abetting intentional second-degree murder and attempted first-degree aggravated robbery.

Police said they obtained surveillance video showing Tara Baker’s Jeep driving past King’s residence shortly before 1:30 p.m. on the day of the shooting. A short time later, two people could be seen walking west toward King’s house.

Investigators determined that the shooting happened between 1:53 and 2 p.m. The Jeep could be seen moving at a “high rate of speed” about two blocks from the homicide scene, just one minute after the shooting was reported to 911, according to the charges.

Authorities said the suspects apparently changed clothes sometime before the Jeep was again captured on video at a gas station across the street from King’s house at 2:26 p.m. The video reportedly shows King leaving the Jeep and going into the store, and then walking back to his house.

Investigators said they also obtained photos of Davenport holding what appears to be a Glock 9 mm handgun taken approximately a week before the shooting. 

While fleeing the scene, Davenport reportedly called Haywood, who told him that they need to “lay low” and said he would make arrangements for a hotel room in Superior, Wis.

Haywood allegedly had another woman book the room in her name and they picked up Davenport. Tara Baker drove her brother and children to the hotel later that night, according to the charges.

Davenport and Tara Baker are scheduled to be back in court on Tuesday, with Haywood and Noah Baker due back on Sept. 20. King’s next appearance has not been scheduled.

FARGO, N.D. — Family and friends of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, frustrated by the lack of results in the search for her and the time it took to find the newborn baby believed to be hers, launched their own search on Friday while Fargo police asked for the public’s help in looking for the 22-year-old woman not seen in a week.

Meanwhile, Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said Friday afternoon that formal charges against the two people arrested in connection with the kidnapping, Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, will not be filed until next week.

More than 100 people, including members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Belcourt Fire Department, turned out Friday afternoon at Trollwood Park in north Fargo to search it and the surrounding neighborhood for LaFontaine-Greywind. Her mother is a member of the Turtle Mountain Tribe.

“We’re not going to sit and wait,” said Tarita Silk, LaFontaine-Greywind’s aunt, who helped organize the search. “Fargo police don’t want us to do anything. We sat for five days. The baby was sitting upstairs. That was just too much. We need to go find Savanna.”

LaFontaine-Greywind, eight months pregnant, disappeared last Saturday after being asked to help a fellow tenant of her apartment complex fit a dress being sewn, her family said.

Fargo Police Chief David Todd said at a Friday press conference the investigation had to move carefully so those responsible did not harm the pregnant woman or her baby. He reiterated that an extraordinary amount of manpower and tools were devoted to the case from the beginning.

Todd said police have “combed” the area around her apartment complex. The Fargo Fire Department on Friday continued its daily rescue boat searches of the Red River.

Searches of the area and river, however, appear to have produced no information about LaFontaine-Greywind’s whereabouts.

When asked whether those searches had revealed any clues about her location, Todd said, “Not that I know of. But those searches are continuing. Now we’re asking for the public’s help.”

SEEKING PUBLIC’S HELP

Todd called on the public “throughout the city” to “check their property, buildings, garages, outbuildings for any sign of entry or any sign of someone having been there.”

He asked landlords to check vacant apartments for any sign of entry or use. He also requested people look through dumpsters for suspicious materials. A call for the public’s help was posted on the Fargo Police website.

Police also asked the public to contact them if they saw a brown 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee four-door with Minnesota license plates 876-EPR anytime between last Saturday afternoon, Aug. 19, and Thursday, Aug. 24.

Residents of the apartment building where the woman disappeared say the vehicle belonged to Hoehn. Police towed the vehicle from the building parking lot on Thursday. The vehicle is pictured on the Fargo Police Department Facebook page.

Police on Friday were also following up on information learned in hours-long searches of the apartment building on Thursday and early Friday, as well as searches of electronic devices. Investigators and representatives of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation were at the apartment complex well into the night.

Todd said police are “targeting searches to other areas based on information gathered.”

‘WE HAVE THE RIGHT PEOPLE’

Todd also provided greater detail Friday about the investigation that enabled police to find the newborn baby and arrest the two suspects on Thursday.

“Until Wednesday,” he said, “we had not yet established a criminal nexus to this case that would allow us to obtain warrants for a residence and electronic devices. We were running constant surveillance and investigating several different theories regarding Savanna being held against her will and/or her child being induced or removed and possibly alive.”

Rumors that police were prompted to act by a report of someone hearing a baby cry is false, Todd said.

Police entered the third-floor apartment of Crews and Hoehn by force and found Crews with the baby. Crews was arrested and taken away in a patrol car. Hoehn was arrested in a traffic stop in an undisclosed location. The baby Crews had with her was taken by ambulance to Sanford Children’s Hospital, where it was checked over and is doing fine. Social services is now caring for the child.

The two suspects confirmed to police that the baby belonged to LaFontaine-Greywind.

“The interviews were cooperative up to that point,” Todd said. He said the suspects refused to provide any information on LaFontaine-Greywind’s whereabouts or whether she is alive. 

Todd said there are no other suspects in the case.

“We have the right people,” he said.

When asked why three previous searches of the apartment where Crews and the baby were found did not yield more useful information or the baby, Todd said those searches were simple visual searches conducted without search warrants and with consent of the occupants.

“There is the possibility that the infant was not in the apartment,” he said. “It may have been moved to a different location.”

NEW PRAGUE, Minn. — A Wisconsin man died in a one-vehicle accident near New Prague on Thursday night and the driver of the vehicle was arrested.

The Le Sueur County sheriff’s office said a vehicle driven by Jesse Dean Brown, 34, of New Prague, carrying passenger Jarrett Fredrick Luethe, 26, of Sparta, Wis., rolled into a field at 11:24 p.m.

The vehicle was engulfed in flames. Both men were outside the vehicle when authorities arrived. Luethe died at the scene.

Brown was checked out at a hospital and then arrested for possible charges of criminal vehicle operation/homicide and suspected DWI. 

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — A Minnesota man is dead after a motorcycle crash in North Dakota.

Police say 29-year-old Anthony Lossing, of Bemidji, Minnesota, apparently disregarded traffic signals at an intersection in Grand Forks and collided with a pickup truck about 6:15 p.m. Thursday.

Lossing was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The two people in the pickup weren’t hurt.

AUSTIN, Minn. — One person is dead after an early morning house fire in Austin.

Fire Chief Jim McCoy told the Austin Daily Herald that passers-by reported the fire about 5:30 a.m. Friday.

Emergency responders found an unresponsive woman in a bedroom and got her out through a window. CPR at the scene failed to revive her, and she was pronounced dead.

The 40-year-old victim wasn’t immediately identified.

The state fire marshal will be investigating the cause of the fire.

FARGO – Fargo police have brought in special placenta-sniffing dogs from Minneapolis to aid in the search for clues in the disappearance of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind and the discovery of a newborn baby believed to belong to her.

The specially-trained K-9 team began searching on Friday and continued on Saturday. Fargo police Chief David Todd would not reveal where they have been searching.

The department posted photographs of the dogs search on its Facebook page Saturday. “These K9s are specially trained in locating placentas,” the post reads, in part. “So far, the searches have not yielded any results. They are still out searching for Savanna. #FindSavanna”

Fargo police on Friday also searched a cornfield and grove of trees near Dilworth, Minn., responding to information gathered in interviews and searches.

Asked if the expansion of the investigation to another state would make the case a federal issue and prompt the FBI to join the investigation, Todd said, “Not until we find something.” He said the FBI is assisting Fargo policy “in technical ways,” but that the Fargo Police Department remains the lead law enforcement agency on the case.

Detectives also collected surveillance video taken about the time LaFontaine-Greywind disappeared from several businesses in Fargo and are going through that video.

Police reported that they have received “many calls” on its tipline about the LaFontaine-Greywind case and that detectives are following up on all information provided.

Police continue to encourage the public to check all areas of their properties for any possible information that may relate to the case. Anyone with information should call the Fargo Police tipline at 701-235-7335.

FARGO — The last thing Brooke Lynn Crews put on the public portion of her Facebook page are the words: “When you truly stop caring what the (expletive) anyone thinks of you, you will reach a whole new level of freedom.”

That was on New Year’s Eve, and only one friend commented.

Starting on Friday, Aug. 25, many more people commented, but they were calling Crews names and wishing her a long stay in prison. Several wondered whether she had children of her own.

Crews, 38, was arrested the day before along with her boyfriend William Henry Hoehn, 32, for their alleged involvement in the disappearance of a pregnant neighbor, Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, 22. Police found a newborn baby in Crews and Hoehn’s apartment who they believe is LaFontaine-Greywind’s, but the mother was nowhere to be found.

In Bradenton, Fla., Aaron Edwards, who had a child with Crews 22 years ago, said he was shocked to learn from his daughter that her mother had been accused of such a crime. To him, she was not particularly dangerous but irresponsible, not having been involved with their daughter’s upbringing for the past 19 years and not paying child

support.

He said his daughter is in touch with three other siblings who have been similarly ignored by Crews, and he knows Crews has at least three more children. “It just seemed like she was more into doing her partying, do her own thing and not have to have anything holding her back. And she wanted to go off and do what she wanted to.”

Hoehn has at least two children of his own, one of whom he physically abused in 2011 when the boy was a baby, according to court records.

The Forum tried to contact the mothers of Hoehn’s children and others who knew Crews but was unsuccessful.

Mother of seven

When Edwards knew her, Crews was a 15-year-old from Bradenton named Brooke Doolin, and she had already been a mother for a few years, he said. He was 18 then, and she told him she was 18 also, he said, but he found out the truth when he took her to see the doctor while she was pregnant with their daughter.

She stuck around a couple of years but eventually left him to be with someone else, he said. He hasn’t heard from her for 19 years, and their daughter has only had contact with her over Facebook for a few months about seven years ago, he said.

From what Crews told him, she seemed to have had a rootless childhood bouncing in and out of foster care, though she never used that to justify her behavior, he said. She had a powerful temper, he said, but wasn’t violent except for their last fight over bills when she threatened him with a hammer.

Court records from Florida, Minnesota and North Dakota show Crews has had children by at least five men. Two of the men, including Edwards, and her eldest child, who’s now in her mid-20s, sued her for child support.

Edwards said the courts lost track of her for a while because she didn’t seem to have a permanent address. He said she paid a total of about $600 in child support.

She seemed to have settled down a few years ago after giving birth to her youngest children, now 12 and 14, and marrying their father, Carl Crews of Perham, Minn. Court records show they divorced in 2008, and there was a dispute over her paying child support in 2015 when the court noted she was “voluntarily unemployed.”

A baby’s fractured skull

Crews started dating Hoehn around 2014, and it seemed to have been a stormy relationship, according to court records.

In May 2016, not long after they moved into the apartment they were living in until their arrest, police reported they had a fight that led to Hoehn throwing her into the bathtub. He pleaded guilty to simple assault and was ordered by the court to have no contact with Crews.

Police came to their apartment again six months later after hearing of a disturbance there and found Hoehn with Crews. He pleaded guilty to violating a no-contact order.

Hoehn, too, seemed to have had a difficult upbringing.

In 2001, a few weeks after he turned 16, he sued his father Dean and mother Carolyn Johnson for a few thousand dollars in child support, according to court records. He was living in Fargo then, while his father lived in Larimore, N.D., and his mother in Kingsville, Texas.

Three years later when he was 18, he would be sued for child support himself by Ryananne Hunsberger, a Philadelphia woman. Their child is now 13. Six years later, he became a father again when he was with Angela Nelson, a Grand Forks woman.

In 2011, when the younger of his two children was a baby, Hoehn brought him to a Grand Forks hospital where doctors found fractures in his skull near his right ear. Law enforcement officials determined the fractures couldn’t have been caused by an accident or medical condition and charged Hoehn with child abuse. The boy, who is now 6, wasn’t expected at the time to have long-term health consequences.

Hoehn pleaded guilty in 2012 just before a jury trial was to begin.

He was sentenced to one year in the Grand Forks County jail with about two-thirds of that time suspended and was placed on two years of probation. A no-contact order between Hoehn and his son was lifted in June 2012.

On the public portion of Hoehn’s Facebook page, one of the most recent postings is a video captioned: “So how’s 2017 going so far?” In the video, a boy at an indoor playground jumps off a platform onto some flexible webbing high above the ground only to plunge through all of the webbing into the darkness below.

Minneapolis police have arrested a St. Paul man in connection with a Tuesday evening shooting that injured an innocent bystander on downtown’s Hennepin Avenue.

Delorien Chatman, 28, is being held in the Hennepin County jail on suspicion of assault and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Charges are expected Monday, said Scott Seroka, a spokesman with the Minneapolis Police Department.

In August 2012, Chatman was convicted in Ramsey County District Court of possessing a dangerous weapon, a felony, but two second-degree assault charges were dismissed. His previous convictions include driving under the influence, driving with an open bottle, marijuana possession and trespassing.

The shooting victim told KSTP-TV that he thought nothing of it Tuesday evening when he saw two men arguing near a bus stop at Hennepin Avenue and Sixth Street.

But then one of the arguing men shot at the other and missed, hitting the bystander.

The bullet became permanently lodged in the man’s stomach. Workers from a nearby sandwich shop rushed to help him. Doctors later removed part of his intestine and repaired holes in his colon, but he is expected to recover.

FARGO — Ashton Matheny is experiencing a deeper hell than most people can imagine.

One week ago, his girlfriend of six years, Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, eight months pregnant with their child, disappeared from her north Fargo apartment building.

Then, on Thursday, police found a newborn baby girl in the very same apartment building and arrested two people suspected of kidnapping LaFontaine-Greywind and the baby, and perhaps much worse.

LaFontaine-Greywind, meanwhile, remains missing. Matheny hasn’t been allowed to see the baby girl believed to belong to him and his girlfriend. He hasn’t even seen a photo of the girl. The couple named their child Haisley Jo.

Although the two suspects told police that the baby belongs to LaFontaine-Greywind, authorities won’t allow family to see the child until DNA testing confirms LaFontaine-Greywind is the mother. The baby remains at Sanford Children’s Hospital and in the custody of Cass County Social Services.

“It breaks my heart,” Matheny says. “They’re admitting it’s (our) baby. I guarantee if I saw it I could tell whose child is. It doesn’t matter what I think. They have guidelines and procedures. It’s frustrating, man.”

After the newborn was found Thursday, Fargo police took a toothbrush belonging to LaFontaine-Greywind to collect DNA samples. Matheny said police also took some of her clothing so DNA could be collected from them.

Police didn’t collect DNA evidence from Matheny right away, perhaps because the couple is not married.

On Friday morning, Fargo Police asked Matheny to come in so they could collect DNA evidence from him. They took three cotton swabs worth of DNA from the inside of his mouth. Matheny was told results would take about a week to produce.

“It’s taking forever,” he says. “It’s taking too long. This whole thing is taking too long.”

‘LONGEST WEEK’

Matheny and LaFontaine-Greywind were scheduled to move into an apartment together in north Fargo on Friday, Sept. 1. The baby was due Wednesday, Sept. 20. The apartment is across McKinley Park from the building where the Greywind family lives and the woman disappeared. 

A member of the Spirit Lake tribe, like LaFontaine-Greywind, Matheny had been staying with his dad on the reservation near Devils Lake until his girlfriend’s disappearance. He was helping with construction on his father’s house, “trying to get money for the baby.” He has been applying for jobs in Fargo in anticipation of his move.

Until June, Matheny had been living in Minneapolis, working construction, but moved back to North Dakota to be nearer to LaFontaine-Greywind as the due date for their child approached.

He was housesitting for his mom in Grand Forks when he learned of his girlfriend’s disappearance. He had last communicated with her about an hour before she went upstairs in her apartment building, supposedly to help a neighbor who needed a model to help pin a dress. That neighbor is believed to be Brooke Lynn Crews, who was arrested with the baby in her possession.

LaFontaine-Greywind’s mother called Matheny about 4:30 p.m. last Saturday to ask if he’d heard from her. He told her mother that he had texted her at 1:24 p.m.

“She said, ‘Something’s wrong – Savanna’s gone,’” Matheny recalls. “I started freaking out. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

He didn’t have a car, so wasn’t able to get to Fargo until about 9 p.m. the day she went missing. Since then, he’s been staying with a friend in Fargo, trying to cope with the agony of everything that has happened.

“It’s been the longest week of my life,” he said.

On Friday, while family, friends, and the public searched Trollwood Park for LaFontaine-Greywind, Matheny stood apart from the crowd with friends, his head down. Another public search was Saturday at Oak Grove Park in Fargo

“I almost fainted from watching everyone,” he said. “I can’t go out there and search. I want so bad to help, but couldn’t come to terms (with what would happen) if I found her. It would shatter me. It would break me in half.”

‘LOOK AT HER’

Matheny and LaFontaine-Greywind met in 2011 at Devils Lake High School. He was a freshman. She was a sophomore. They were just friends the first two months after they met, but then Matheny mustered up the courage to ask her out.

It took two months for them to have their first kiss, he says, but he knew before long that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

“I was the first one to say ‘I love you,’” he says. “It’s a hard thing to say to someone. I said, ‘I love you. I want to be with you.’ She was surprised. She said, ‘Wow, I never thought you’d say that. I feel exactly the same way.’”

What was the attraction?

“Look at her, man,” Matheny says, before pausing and then explaining why he was drawn to her beyond the physical. “She has a kind soul. She’s loving. She cares for everyone. All she does is love and give and care.”

Matheny and LaFontaine-Greywind have what her mom described as “a different sort of relationship.” They have not always lived in the same place. Matheny’s parents split up when he was young and he’s lived with various relatives, moving back and forth between the Spirit Lake Reservation, Grand Forks and Minneapolis. His father lives on the reservation, his mother in Grand Forks. He has an aunt in Minneapolis. He’s also lived with his paternal grandmother. 

The couple lived briefly together on the reservation in Matheny’s father’s house. They also lived together for a short time in Grand Forks when Matheny was living with his brother, working on the sugar beet harvest.

Matheny has struggled to find his place — he would like to make music, has performed in Minneapolis clubs, and has songs on SoundCloud under the name Ash Groove. He’s experienced heartbreak before. His older brother killed himself last year on the reservation.

Matheny and LaFontaine-Greywind’s relationship has remained strong despite it all.

“All I wanted was a life with Savanna and my baby,” he says. “But they took it from me. My world’s gone, man. They took my world from me.”

MOORHEAD – Kayakers on the Red River made a grim discovery Sunday evening when they came across the body of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind.

Hundreds of searchers had been combing the Fargo-Moorhead area and nearby towns and fields for the 22-year-old, who was eight months pregnant when she went missing on Saturday, Aug. 19.

About 5:44 p.m. Sunday, the kayakers reported finding a body-sized object wrapped in plastic in the river, hung up on a log near the 90th Avenue Northwest bridge, Fargo Police Chief David Todd told reporters during an impromptu news conference about a quarter-mile east of the river in far north Moorhead.

About the same time the kayakers made their discovery, a search party was searching a nearby farmstead, Todd said.

“There are some suspicious items in that farmstead that lead us to believe that that may be a crime scene,” Todd said.

Law enforcement pulled the body from the river about 8:20 p.m., and the body was identified as that of LaFontaine-Greywind about 9:20 p.m., the chief said.

LaFontaine-Greywind lived at 2825 9th St. N. with her family in an apartment building near McKinley Elementary School on Fargo’s north side.

Family members said that on Aug. 19, LaFontaine-Greywind left the family’s apartment to help an upstairs neighbor who said she needed a model while sewing a dress. But LaFontaine-Greywind never came home.

On Thursday, Aug. 24, police found a healthy, newborn girl in the same neighbor’s apartment.

Police then arrested Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, who lived in that apartment. They are being held at the Cass County Jail awaiting formal charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, a felony.

They are expected to be charged this week. There was no word on what additional charges Crews and Hoehn will face with the discovery of LaFontaine-Greywind’s body.

Authorities are seeking to confirm that the baby was LaFontaine-Greywind’s through DNA testing. However, the suspects have told police the baby is hers.

“The interviews were cooperative up to that point,” Todd said last week. At that time, he said the suspects refused to provide any information on LaFontaine-Greywind’s whereabouts or whether she was alive.

The infant was immediately taken to Sanford Children’s Hospital. The child was in good health and placed under the protective custody of Cass County Social Services, police said.

A few of the searchers – among the estimated 400 people who have participated in the public search for LaFontaine-Greywind since it began on Friday – watched Todd as he talked with reporters at a roadblock at the corner of 90th Avenue Northwest and 15th Street, while warning lights strobed on the top of two Clay County Sheriff’s Department SUVs.

A Blaine man accused of serving as the Minnesota manager for an international sex-trafficking ring that exploited vulnerable, foreign-born women from China admitted to his role in the criminal operation during a Friday court hearing.

After reaching a plea deal with prosecutors on the case, Dongzhou Jiang, 29, pleaded guilty in Washington County District Court to one count of felony-level racketeering and another count of felony-level sex trafficking, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office.

Both Ramsey and Washington county authorities led the investigation into the illicit business, which was reportedly based out of California but had service areas in regions throughout the United States, including the metro area, legal documents say.

Jiang faced six felonies before reaching an agreement with the state.

His attorney, Tyler Bliss, declined to comment on Jiang’s decision to admit his involvement.

Per the terms of his deal, Jiang is expected to be sentenced to between 3.5 and 5 years in prison and will be mandated to turn over all the cash he made from the business, authorities say.

Two other defendants in the case, Fangyao Wu, 23, of Irvine Calif., and her mother, Hong Jing, 48, have also pleaded guilty to roles in the operation. Wu entered her plea earlier this month to one count of racketeering. Jing pleaded guilty Monday morning to felony-level counts of racketeering and aiding and abetting sex-trafficking.

One other who was also charged, Sophia Wang Navas, 49, also from California, has yet to a enter a plea.

County attorneys for both Washington and Ramsey said in a statement last week that they are “very pleased” with the outcome of the cases to date.

“As this case continues forward against the remaining … (defendant), and as other separate investigations are pursued by our offices, we are convinced more than ever that multi-jurisdictional partnerships between prosecutors and law enforcement like this one are critical in stopping these types of far-reaching human trafficking schemes operating throughout our state and region,” Ramsey County John Choi said in the prepared statement.

Jing and Navas, whom Jiang described in court as his “boss ladies,” are suspected of orchestrating the sex-trafficking ring from their base in California, placing ads for the women lured into the complex enterprise, mostly from China, and communicating with clients who wanted to pay them for sex.

The operation ran from February 2015 until February 2017 and involved nearly 20,000 advertisements for sexual services placed on Backpage.com, charges say.

In describing the ring last winter, Orput pointed to a bust made at a Cottage Grove home in February to serve as an example of how it worked. He said enforcement found little more than two mattresses inside the townhouse along with “a line of men” waiting to have sex with three women found inside the home.

Jiang coordinated the logistics of the operation in Minnesota and North Dakota, finding establishments and private homes for the women to work out of and collecting the money paid to them by clients, the complaint said.

He told officers that the women, who ranged in age from 32 to 45, were forced to earn at least $800 a day or risk getting fired, authorities say. He also said they had to pay for housing, transportation and food.

Most of the women were foreign born, mainly Chinese nationals. Locally, they served clients across the Twin Cities, including Oakdale, Cottage Grove, St. Paul, Blaine, Maplewood and St. Louis Park.

Jiang typically rotated the women’s location every two weeks, he told police, according to the complaint. He admitted that women were sometimes raped, beaten and robbed at gunpoint by clients.

He referred to the incidents as “just part of the business,” the complaint said.

Investigators say they discovered tens of thousands of dollars in traffickers’ bank accounts. One account contained more than $850,000.

None of the trafficked women initially identified by investigators in the case wanted help or services, authorities say. Orput added that all the women involved were isolated, spoke little to no English and were fully dependent upon the traffickers. He also said they may have feared deportation for going against their traffickers.

Jiang is expected to be sentenced in December.

During an Aug. 17 robbery of a Verizon Wireless store in Inver Grove Heights, Jamaal Marquie Mays allegedly pointed a .45-caliber handgun at a clerk’s head and told him to “make it easy on me.”

The clerk had another idea: He pulled his own gun from his waistband and fired three shots, hitting Mays twice and critically wounding him.

The allegations against Mays are detailed in a criminal complaint filed Monday in Dakota County District Court in Hastings charging him with first-degree aggravated robbery and two weapons violations — possession of a firearm by ineligible person and possession of a firearm with an altered or removed serial number.

Mays, a 32-year-old convicted felon with a lengthy criminal history in Minnesota, is recovering from gunshot wounds at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. He was listed in serious condition Monday.

A second suspect, who ran from the store after the clerk and Mays exchanged gunfire, remains at large.

According to the criminal complaint:

Police were called to the store — The Cellular Connection, at the northeast corner of Concord Boulevard and Cahill Avenue — about 11 a.m. for an armed robbery in progress. When officers arrived at the store, the clerk said he had shot one of two robbery suspects in self-defense.

The clerk, identified in the complaint by initials JCR, told police he had been helping the two suspects look at cellphones. After coming out of the backroom with a phone, Mays pointed a gun at his head.

The clerk has a permit to carry a firearm, police said.

The serial number had been scratched off the pistol that Mays used in the robbery, charges say.

No one else was in the store at the time of the robbery, police said.

During the gunfire, a bullet grazed an employee at Super Wok Chinese Restaurant, which adjoins the cellphone store.

“This was a very frightening experience for the store clerk and others in adjoining businesses,” Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom said Monday in a statement. “We are thankful that neither the store clerk nor any other individuals were seriously injured as a result of this armed robbery.”

A 2000 Honda Odyssey minivan the second suspect used to flee the area was found Monday in St. Paul, Inver Grove Heights police Lt. Joshua Otis said.

Authorities are still working to identify the second suspect, who is described as a black man about 20 to 30 years old. He was wearing dark-colored pants, a dark-green jacket, baseball hat and black Nike shoes with a white swoosh.

Authorities ask that anyone with information about his identity or whereabouts call Inver Grove Heights police at 651-450-2525 or 911.

At the time of the stickup, Mays, who lives in Crystal, was on probation for a 2015 theft conviction in Hennepin County, according to court records. His criminal history in Minnesota also includes convictions for felony second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, being an accomplice after an attempted murder, trespassing and misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

The Dakota County attorney’s office said Monday in a statement that a first court appearance for Mays has not been scheduled because it is not known when he will be released from the hospital.

Meanwhile, the store clerk has not yet returned to work, manager Drew Barns said Monday.

“He seems to be doing well,” Barns said. “We haven’t pushed him to come back. It’ll be up to him.”

READ THE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

Brooke Lynn Crews, charged with conspiring to murder a pregnant neighbor and kidnap her unborn child, told police the neighbor gave Crews the baby and left, according to court documents released Monday.

William Henry Hoehn, Crews’ boyfriend and co-defendant, told police he arrived home to find Crews cleaning up blood in the bathroom and presenting him with the child saying, “This is our baby. This is our family.”

The neighbor, Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, 22, went missing Aug. 19. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Her body was found wrapped in plastic bags in the Red River on Sunday night, Aug. 27.

Crews, 38, and Hoehn, 32, have each been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and providing false information to law enforcement. They were set to appear in Cass County District Court at 2 p.m. Monday.

According to court records, after police found a baby in the apartment that Crews and Hoehn shared on Aug. 24, Crews told detectives she had asked Greywind to come to the apartment and taught her how to self-induce birth by breaking her own water.

Greywind’s family said she had told them she was visiting an upstairs neighbor at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 19. Crews said Greywind then left the apartment and returned at 3 a.m. Aug. 21 to give Crews the baby.

Hoehn told police that he returned home from work at 2:30 p.m. Aug. 19, an hour after Greywind allegedly visited, to find Crews cleaning up blood in the bathroom and presenting him with the baby. He told police that he did remove garbage bags containing bloody towels and his own bloody shoes and leaving them in a dumpster at a West Fargo apartment building.

LaFontaine-Greywind’s body was found about 8:20 p.m. in the river near the 90th Avenue Northwest bridge. About the same time, investigators from the Clay County (Minn.) sheriff’s office were called to an abandoned farmstead after a search party reported finding suspicious items that could indicate criminal activity.

“The team that was searching, when they went to the house, they found some things that were very, very suspicious,” Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said. “That’s what brought us there.”

The Clay County sheriff’s office is handling the search and investigation of the farmstead, Fargo Police Chief David Todd said.

On the property is an abandoned house with barns, and it has not had an official address for years. The owner has cooperated with investigators, Bergquist said.

LaFontaine-Greywind’s body, which was found bound in plastic and duct tape, was sent to the Ramsey County medical examiner’s office in St. Paul for an autopsy.

On Monday, investigators could not say where LaFontaine-Greywind may have died or how. Preliminary information from the autopsy is expected later today or early Tuesday.

Todd said, “Savanna was the victim of a cruel and vicious act of depravity.”

Lt. Jason Nelson of the Fargo Police Department provided additional information about earlier searches of Hoehn and Crews’ Fargo apartment. Officers searched that apartment twice for LaFontaine-Greywind on Saturday, the day she went missing, and a detective searched the apartment Sunday. There was no indication of LaFontaine-Greywind or a child during those three searches, Nelson said.

During those searches, the suspects were cooperative and there were no signs of a crime scene, Nelson said.

No one else is expected to face charges in the case. “We have no indication that there are any other suspects involved in this crime,” Nelson said.

A 24-year-old Hopkins man has been charged with killing his 67-year-old neighbor with an ax-like tool last week, the Hennepin County attorney’s office says.

According to a Monday criminal complaint charging Mitchell Edward Hoogenakker with second-degree murder, he went to the home of the victim, John Gallagher Jr., on Friday morning.

According to the complaint, police were called to Gallagher’s home, where they found the victim lying in the front yard in the 200 block of 10th Avenue. He was dead, having suffered numerous wounds to his back and head.

Gallagher’s wife told police that she had been lying on the couch in the living room when she heard a noise at the front door and saw Hoogenakker breaking into the house. She ran to call 911 and saw Hoogenakker pull her husband into the living room and onto the floor, where he hit Gallagher, swinging the tool with both arms, before pulling him outside.

A man who is a renter in the Gallagher home said he heard a fight downstairs that then spilled outside. The renter told police he saw the attacker walking away from the house. Police used a dog to track the man to a house a few blocks away, in the 300 block of Ninth Avenue.

Hoogenakker came outside and was arrested by police, who found the ax-like tool in a closet. ” Hoogenakker” was etched into the handle. Hoogenakker also admitted that he attacked Gallagher, who had an active harassment restraining order in effect against the suspect.

Hoogenakker is expected to make his first court appearance Tuesday, and bail of $1 million will be requested, the county attorney’s office said.

Authorities have charged a St. Paul man in connection with the shooting of an innocent bystander in downtown Minneapolis last week.

Delorien Chatman, 28, is charged with two counts of assault as well as one count of possession of a firearm by an adjudicated delinquent. Chatman’s bail has been set at $500,000.

“We requested a higher bail in this case because the alleged shooting by Mr. Chatman seriously injured an innocent man,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman in a statement on the charges. “As I’ve said before, we will continue to use the tools available to us to combat these senseless shootings.”

Authorities say that at 7:17 p.m. Tuesday, police arrived at a reported shooting scene near a bus stop at Sixth Street and Hennepin Avenue. They found a man with a gunshot wound to his stomach. Witnesses told police the man was an innocent bystander, according to the criminal complaint.

Two men had gotten into a fight and the alleged gunman was knocked to the ground, according to witnesses. He fired a shot that hit the other man and then ran away, according to the complaint.

Based on witness descriptions of what the shooter wore as well as surveillance video, Chatman was later arrested.

According to the complaint, Chatman denied being in Minneapolis on the day of the shooting and said that he doesn’t go to that city’s downtown. Chatman continued to tell authorities this even after being shown images of him in Minneapolis.

He is scheduled to make his first court appearance Tuesday.

The Hennepin County attorney says he expects to make a decision about filing charges in the fatal Minneapolis police shooting of Justine Damond by the end of the year.

In a Monday statement, County Attorney Mike Freeman said that while the investigation by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is continuing, it typically takes four to six months to render a charging decision in fatal police shootings.

Freeman also reiterated that he would review the BCA’s investigative findings along with senior staff and then make the decision himself.

In the past, a grand jury would have been convened to make such a decision. But Freeman changed that policy 18 months ago in the interest of “more transparency and accountability.” The change was announced amid the BCA investigation into the fatal Minneapolis police shooting of Jamar Clark in November 2015.

Damand was fatally shot by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, who had responded to her 911 call late July 15.

Damond, 40, had called police to report a possible sexual assault behind her home in the Fulton neighborhood in Southwest Minneapolis.

She was shot as she approached the responding squad car.

Noor’s partner, Matthew Harrity, told investigators that he was startled by a loud noise right before Damond approached their police SUV. Noor has declined to be interviewed by investigators.

Authorities say the teenager who was fatally shot at a gas station in Crystal over the weekend was a former student-athlete at a Minneapolis high school.

The Hennepin County medical examiner’s office says 18-year-old Hae’veon Wesley, of Brooklyn Park, was shot in the chest at a SuperAmerica in the 5000 block of West Broadway about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.

On Monday, police said that a juvenile male was in custody in the case. They said investigators don’t believe the shooting was random and believe the suspect and victim knew each other.

Wesley was a standout running back at Patrick Henry High School, where he was a senior last year.

WILLMAR, Minn. – Investigators believe the dog found dead Aug. 1 in a west-central Minnesota lake with a rope tethering it to an anchor had been previously euthanized after suffering a serious illness.

Kandiyohi County Sheriff Dan Hartog stated in a Monday news release that the dog’s owner “placed the dog in Point Lake as a burial site because that is where the owner had taken the dog many times in the past to swim and fish.’’

The sheriff’s office will be issuing the owner of the female English springer spaniel a citation for disposing of a dead animal in the lake, a petty misdemeanor that carries a possible $190 fine. The owner is not being named because of the pending charges, according to the sheriff’s office.

The dog had been found in about 6 feet of water 200 feet from the north shore of Point Lake north of Willmar.

The sheriff’s office had a necropsy performed on the dog. It was unable to determine a cause of death due to the extent of decomposition. However, there was no evidence of physical trauma on the body, according to the release.

Investigators learned the identity of the dog’s owner after following up on two separate, anonymous tips. The tipsters reported that a person known to them recently talked about having a dog euthanized.

A sheriff’s office detective followed up on those tips and learned the owner had euthanized the dog because it had been suffering from a serious illness.