LA CROSSE, Wis. — A La Crosse man is in trouble with the law after he was arrested for running around a parking lot naked and telling officers he was on “tons and tons of acid.”

The La Crosse Tribune reports that police received a complaint during the early morning hours of June 29 of a man running around naked and yelling incoherently.

Police found the 29-year-old in a parking lot on the city’s north side. Asked why he was running around naked, the man said “oh, that’s what all those drugs are for” and “what’s wrong with being a heroin addict?”

Police asked him what he’d taken and he responded “tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of acid.”

Officers arrested him for lewd and lascivious behavior and disorderly conduct.

One man is in custody and another in the hospital following a shooting Saturday in Columbia Heights.

Oluwatoni John Olayiwola, 26, of Columbia Heights, is being held at the Anoka County jail pending charges of first- and second-degree assault after he allegedly shot Abiodun Williams Olayiwola, also of Columbia Heights, according to the Anoka County sheriff’s office.

Police were dispatched to the 4600 block of Heights Drive about 9 a.m. on the report of a person being shot.

Scanner chatter suggests that Oluwatoni Olayiwola shot Abiodun Olayiwola in the shoulder with a shotgun.

Before approaching the house, police had accepted an offer of back up from the Minnesota State Patrol and had requested a K-9 unit.

Police were able to evacuate Abiodun who is in stable condition at an area hospital, according to the sheriff’s office.

Oluwatoni Olayiwola was taken into custody without incident and the case remains under investigation.

The Minnesota State Patrol is asking for the public’s help in locating a vehicle involved in a fatal hit-and-run crash early Saturday in Otter Tail County.

A 21-year-old man from Wahpeton, N.D., was killed about 1 a.m. Saturday as he walked with two other males in a dark portion of Highway 78 just south of Ottertail. Police said they were walking south on the northbound shoulder when the man tripped and fell into the traffic lane.

A vehicle headed north struck the man and continued traveling, leaving the scene.

According to the other two at the scene, the vehicle was a smaller sedan, such as a Chevrolet Cavalier, and could be white or silver in color. The vehicle will have front-end damage and a fluid leak.

The State Patrol is asking anyone with information about the vehicle or the driver to call Sgt. Rod Eischens at 218-846-8244.

The frantic, forlorn quacking of a mother duck led Metro Transit police officers to what has become a common summer phenomenon — ducklings trapped in a storm drain.

Officers Juan Peralta and Dmitriy Vecherkov, on patrol at the Columbia Heights Transit Center Saturday morning, knew what they had to do.

With an assist from the Columbia Heights Department of Public Works, they reached into the murky unknown, pulled out eight tiny mud-caked fuzzballs and returned them to the waiting mother.

“Reunited with their mother, the family waddled on their merry way, quacking and cheeping their appreciation,” Metro Transit said in a Twitter post.

The ducklings were mud-caked but are now safe. Reunited with their mother, the family waddled on their merry way, quacking and cheeping their appreciation. pic.twitter.com/HA9dKAoYvR

— Metro Transit (@MetroTransitMN) July 6, 2019

A motorcyclist was struck by the driver of an SUV that was being pursued by St. Croix County sheriff’s deputies Saturday. The motorcyclist did not survive.

The pursuit started after 4 p.m. Saturday when a caller reported a 2013 Jeep Liberty was taken from Star Prairie Township without permission by someone under a no-contact order, according to the St. Croix County sheriff’s office. Deputies found the Jeep and tried to stop it on Wisconsin 65 just north of New Richmond, but the driver did not stop.

Deputies chased the Jeep east of New Richmond on Wisconsin 64 and then north on Wisconsin 46. As the Jeep came into Deer Park, the driver attempted to pass several vehicles on the left and struck one of a group of motorcyclists that were making a left turn, according to the sheriff’s office.

The Jeep driver fled on foot but was caught after a short pursuit.

The motorcyclist died at the scene.

The Wisconsin State Patrol and Polk County sheriff’s office will investigate.

Minneapolis police are investigating a fatal shooting that occurred early Sunday near Washington Avenue and North First Avenue.

Officers responding to a report of gunfire shortly before 2 a.m. were directed to an adult male lying in a roadway without pulse or respiration.

A sergeant administered CPR, and paramedics raced the victim to Hennepin Health Care shortly afterward. He died there.

Authorities are characterizing the incident as “traffic related.” No arrests had been made as of mid-morning.

Anyone with information about the shooting can call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), or the MPD TIP Line at 612-692-TIPS (8477). The case number is 19-197948. Tips leading to an arrest may be eligible for a financial reward.

An incident involving a man with a gun inside a Chanhassen residence was resolved peacefully Sunday after several hours.

Around 9 a.m., deputies were dispatched to a residence in the 7400 block of Chanhassen Road after a 911 call that a man was threatening and pointing a gun at someone, according to a news release by Carver County Sheriff Jason Kamerud.

When deputies arrived they were initially unable to reach anyone inside the residence and called in SWAT to help.

As soon as the SWAT team established communication with the gunman, the man surrendered and was taken into custody.

Nobody was injured.

The incident is under investigation by the Carver County Sheriff’s office.

The  Eden Prairie Police Department and the Tri-City Swat team assisted the sheriff’s deputies.

The number of inmates who were convicted for assaulting corrections officers at Minnesota state prisons decreased over the past year, following a record surge in violence in the 12 months prior.

There were 156 discipline convictions for assaults on prison staff in the 12-month period ending June 30, according to new data from the state Department of Corrections. That’s down 17 percent from the 188 assault convictions logged the year before but still much higher than previous years.

DOC officials say corrections officers have been on high alert since two of their colleagues died in the line of duty last year. Their deaths brought calls for more staffing at state prisons, which are now being answered with the help of state funding.

Corrections officer Joseph Gomm was allegedly bludgeoned to death by an inmate at the Stillwater prison last July. Two months later, corrections officer Joe Parise died of a medical emergency after responding to an attack on a colleague at the Oak Park Heights facility.

“One of the things I think that happens after incidents like last summer is that there is kind of a general, broader sense of awareness from an officer safety standpoint,” said DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell. “There’s also a tendency to be more diligent in terms of … watching out for one another.”

Most assaults in 2019 occurred at the prisons in Stillwater and Oak Park Heights, which recorded 47 and 42 discipline convictions, respectively. Those numbers are also down compared to the past year, when Oak Park Heights had 66 convictions and Stillwater had 59.

STRICTER PENALTIES AFTER GOMM’S DEATH

Gomm’s death had a major impact on both the officers and offenders at the Stillwater prison, said Associate Warden Victor Wanchena. Over the past year, staff has imposed stricter penalties on inmates who assault corrections officers. And they have begun training older inmates to mentor young offenders.

“We have been really focused on … bridging some gaps in terms of communication. And doing that in such a way that there is an understanding about the need for us to reduce violence, and that the offenders have as big of a role in this as we do,” Wanchena said.

Oak Park Heights corrections officer Glenn Lisowy said the decrease in assaults at his facility is no cause for celebration.

“So 24 more staff didn’t get smoked, but 42 still did,” said Lisowy, who has been assaulted several times in his career. “Tell me a business that thinks that that’s a good thing.”

The St. Cloud prison was the only facility where assaults spiked. It recorded 30 discipline convictions for assaults on officers in the year ending June 30, compared to 16 the year before.

HELP ON THE WAY

The deaths of Gomm and Parise highlighted a problem that had long been ignored by lawmakers and the public: State prisons were dangerously short on staff.

This year, the Legislature gave the DOC enough money to hire 67 new corrections officers over the next two years plus another 11 by the end of fiscal year 2023.

Their efforts have proven successful. Fifty-four recruits will enter the July academy for new corrections officers.

“The July academy, which is what we were really pushing for, does look to have higher numbers than we’ve ever had before when we’ve done the more traditional hiring processes,” Schnell said.

Rape cases and vehicle thefts increased in Minnesota in 2018, but most other major crimes went down, according to a statewide crime report issued Monday.

The report by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension showed reports of rape and human trafficking ticked up from 2017 to 2018.

But violent crimes, in general, saw a nearly 7 percent drop, the report found.

According to the report:

• Murders declined from 114 in 2017 to 104 last year.
• Rape cases jumped 9 percent, climbing from 2,429 reported incidents to 2,656. The jump follows increases in reports in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
• Reports of human trafficking increased slightly, from 173 to 183.
• Robberies dropped substantially, from 3,645 to 2,941.
• Aggravated assault reports fell from 7,115 in 2017 to 6,687 last year.

Property crimes fell around 9 percent between 2017 and 2018, though vehicle thefts continued to climb.

According to the report:

• Larceny saw the biggest drop, falling from 93,455 incidents in 2017 to 85,162 last year.
• Motor vehicle thefts went from 9,960 to 10,073. The jump is in line with previous increases in vehicle thefts in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
• Arson cases fell from 534 to 426.

The report also noted that drug abuse violation arrests for opiates, heroin and cocaine continue to climb across the state. They increased from 2,315 in 2017 to 2,683 in 2018. That number was about 1,600 in 2014.

Bias-motivated incidents fell from 147 to 127. The drop follows an increase in the crime in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The BCA report is a compilation of data from local law enforcement agencies. The BCA compiles the data into an annual report and provides it to the FBI. The full report can be found on the BCA’s website.

Two men stole keys from a 72-year-old woman inside a St. Paul Walmart last week and took off in her vehicle, according to criminal charges.

It didn’t stop there. The two drove the stolen vehicle to her apartment, and were rummaging around inside when a St. Paul police officer who escorted the woman home opened the door to her unit, according to St. Paul police officer Tom Reis.

Startled, one of the men jumped out the third-floor apartment’s window and landed on concrete below before taking off on foot. The second, Joseph Smith, 30, was found hiding in the woman’s bathroom and was arrested, Reis said.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Smith with second-degree burglary and two counts of theft, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.

The second individual hasn’t been located.

Reis was working security at Walmart last Thursday when he said he saw a “visibly shaken” woman with a walker talking to the store manager.

The woman had gone to refill a drink at the Subway inside the store on University Avenue when two men swiped her keys from atop her walker and left the store, the complaint said.

They quickly found her Chevrolet Equinox in the parking lot and took off.

The woman asked Reis whether she should be concerned that they might try to use her keys to also gain access to her apartment, Reis assured her at the time that was unlikely, he recalled Monday.

“Obviously these (didn’t end up being) your typical auto thieves,” Reis said, adding that most vehicle thieves make off with a vehicle and leave it at that.

It was a stroke of good fortune that Reis arranged for an officer to drive the woman home, he said.

“Luckily they decided not to just drop her off and let her go up the apartment because they weren’t expecting what happened to happen,” he said.

Officers found a backpack with a box of the woman’s coins inside. A black cellphone and a red shirt were located in her vehicle.

The woman told Reis that she suspected mail she left in her vehicle along with her insurance card likely tipped the men off to her address.

When interviewed, Smith told police that he met up with two guys who offered to pay him $20 to help out at the apartment, charges say.

Smith’s past convictions include theft by swindle, domestic assault by strangulation and third-degree burglary.

He now faces additional charges of second-degree burglary and two counts of theft.

No attorney was listed for Smith in court records.

The family of Isak Abdirahman Aden on Monday asked state investigators to release more information about an officer-involved shooting last week in Eagan that left him dead.

Aden, 23, of Columbia Heights, died of multiple gunshot wounds during a July 2 standoff with police outside a business. Aden was a domestic assault suspect armed with a gun, Eagan police said.

“He didn’t deserve to die the way that he did,” his sister, Sumaya Aden, 21, said at a news conference held at the South Minneapolis offices of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “I refuse to be silent and will never rest until his justice is served.”

CAIR-MN Executive Director Jaylani Hussein said there are “so many questions” related to the incident that are not being answered by law enforcement. He called upon the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is leading the investigation, to release “all information” regarding the shooting, including police reports, 911 audio tapes and video footage from squad cars and body-worn cameras.

“We’re seeking that information today so that we can come to a conclusion based on the full facts that are still missing from this case,” Hussein said.

Last week, Eagan Police Chief Roger New said little about the alleged domestic assault that led to police being called to the area. He said officers negotiated with Aden for more than four hours before several officers fired shots at him.

New said it was too early to say what prompted the officers to shoot and which agencies they are with. Numerous suburban metro police agencies had responded.

A gun that Aden had was found at the scene, New said.

Aden’s brother, Badrudin Aden, 20, said Monday he was at the scene of the standoff “when my brother was executed by law enforcement officers.”

Hussein said the family would not comment about the domestic assault allegation or the shooting.

“At this point, right now, because there’s so much information that is being withheld from the family, we’re holding off about speaking directly about the incident,” Hussein said.

BCA INVESTIGATION CONTINUES

In a statement Monday, the BCA said its investigators continue to conduct initial interviews with incident participants and witnesses.

The BCA said it would not discuss an active investigation or release investigative data, including video evidence, while the case is open. “Most investigative data, including video evidence, will be made public once the case is closed,” the statement read.

The BCA said it has met with and will continue to meet with Aden’s family and they “will be provided the opportunity to view the video evidence prior to its release.”

The agency said names of the officers who fired their guns will be released once “all who took part in or witnessed the incident have made themselves available to be interviewed by BCA agents.”

‘HE HAD GOALS AND DREAMS’

Aden was taking IT classes at the University of Minnesota and had a full-time job at a bank, his family said.

“I can wholeheartedly say that my brother truly embodied what it meant to be a kind and good person,” his sister said.

Besides petty misdemeanor convictions for traffic and vehicle violations, Aden did not have a criminal record, court records show.

He was a 2014 graduate of Learning for Leadership, a Northeast Minneapolis charter school where he excelled in art, athletics and “most importantly our school community,” said Jason Stockwell, who was an adviser and teacher of the now-closed school.

“My brother’s work ethic was unquestionable,” his sister said. “He had high hopes for not only himself, but for us as well. He had goals and dreams just like any of us.”

WASHINGTON – Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have turned state driver license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through hundreds of millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent, newly released documents show.

Thousands of facial-recognition requests, internal documents and emails over the past five years, obtained through public-records requests by Georgetown University researchers and provided to The Washington Post, reveal that federal investigators have turned state Department of Motor Vehicles databases into the bedrock of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure.

Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA and other “biometric data” taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of the majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.

Neither Congress nor state legislatures have authorized the development of such a system, and growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are criticizing the technology as a dangerous, pervasive and error-prone surveillance tool.

“Law enforcement’s access of state databases,” particularly DMV databases, is “often done in the shadows with no consent,” House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a statement to The Post.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Oversight Committee’s ranking Republican, seemed particularly incensed during a hearing into the technology last month at the use of driver license photos in federal facial-recognition searches without the approval of state legislators or individual license holders.

“They’ve just given access to that to the FBI,” he said. “No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver’s license, got their driver’s licenses. They didn’t sign any waiver saying, ‘Oh, it’s OK to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.’ No elected officials voted for that to happen.”

Despite those doubts, federal investigators have turned facial recognition into a routine investigative tool. Since 2011, the FBI has logged more than 390,000 facial-recognition searches of federal and local databases, including state DMV databases, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said last month, and the records show that federal investigators have forged daily working relationships with DMV officials. In Utah, FBI and ICE agents logged more than 1,000 facial-recognition searches between 2015 and 2017, the records show. Names and other details are hidden, though dozens of the searches are marked as having returned a “possible match.”

San Francisco and Somerville, Massachusetts, have banned their police and public agencies from using facial-recognition software, citing concerns about governmental overreach and a breach of public trust, and the subject is being hotly debated in Washington. On Wednesday, officials with the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and the Secret Service are expected to testify at a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security about their agencies’ use of the technology.

The records show that the technology already is tightly woven into the fabric of modern law enforcement. They detailed the regular use of facial recognition to track down suspects in low-level crimes, including cashing a stolen check and petty theft. And searches are often executed with nothing more formal than an email from a federal agent to a local contact, the records show.

“It’s really a surveillance-first, ask-permission-later system,” said Jake Laperruque, a senior counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. “People think this is something coming way off in the future, but these (facial-recognition) searches are happening very frequently today. The FBI alone does 4,000 searches every month, and a lot of them go through state DMVs.”

The records also underscore the conflicts between the laws of some states and the federal push to find and deport undocumented immigrants. Utah, Vermont and Washington allow undocumented immigrants to obtain full driver licenses or more-limited permits known as driving privilege cards, and ICE agents have run facial-recognition searches on those DMV databases.

More than a dozen states, including New York, as well as the District of Columbia, allow undocumented immigrants to drive legally with full licenses or driving privilege cards, as long as they submit proof of in-state residency and pass the relevant state’s driving-proficiency tests.

Lawmakers in Florida, Texas and other states have introduced bills this year that would extend driving privileges to undocumented immigrants. Some of those states already allow the FBI to scan driver license photos, while others, such as Florida and New York, are negotiating with the FBI over access, according to the GAO.

“The state has told (undocumented immigrants), has encouraged them, to submit that information. To me, it’s an insane breach of trust to then turn around and allow ICE access to that,” said Clare Garvie, a senior associate with the Georgetown law school’s Center on Privacy and Technology who led the research.

An ICE spokesman declined to answer questions about how the agency uses facial-recognition searches, saying its “investigative techniques are generally considered law-enforcement sensitive.”

Asked to comment, the FBI referred The Post to the congressional testimony last month of Deputy Assistant Director Kimberly Del Greco, who said facial-recognition technology was critical “to preserve our nation’s freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security.” The agency has said in the past that while facial-recognition searches can provide helpful leads, agents are expected to verify the findings and secure definitive proof before pursuing arrests or criminal charges.

Twenty-one states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, plus the District of Columbia, allow federal agencies such as the FBI to scan driver license photos, GAO records show. The agreements stipulate some rules for the searches, including that each must be relevant to a criminal investigation.

The FBI’s facial-recognition search has access to local, state and federal databases containing more than 641 million face photos, a GAO director said last month. But the agency provides little information about when the searches are used, who is targeted and how often searches return false matches.

The FBI said its system is 86% accurate at finding the right person if a search is able to generate a list of 50 possible matches, according to the GAO. But the FBI has not tested its system’s accuracy under conditions that are closer to normal, such as when a facial search returns only a few possible matches.

Civil rights advocates have said the inaccuracies of facial recognition pose a heightened danger of misidentification and false arrests. The software’s precision is highly dependent on a number of factors, including the lighting of a subject’s face and the quality of the image, and research has shown that the technology performs less accurately on people with darker skin.

“The public doesn’t have a way of controlling what information the government has on them,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior organizer for the advocacy group Mijente who was particularly concerned about how ICE and other agencies could use the scans to track down immigrants. “And now there’s this rapidly advancing technology, with very few guidelines and protections for people, putting all of this information at their fingertips in a very scary way.”

The records, which include thousands of emails and official documents from federal agencies, as well as Utah, Vermont and Washington state, show how easy it is for a federal investigator to tap into an individual state DMV’s database. While some of the driver photo searches were made on the strength of federal subpoenas or court orders, many requests for searches involved nothing more than an email to a DMV official with the target’s “probe photo” attached. The official would then search the driver license database and provide details of any possible matches.

The search capability was offered not just to help identify criminal suspects, but also to detect possible witnesses, victims, bodies, and innocent bystanders and other people not charged with crimes.

Utah’s DMV database was the subject of nearly 2,000 facial-recognition searches from outside law enforcement agencies between 2015 and 2017 – sometimes dozens of searches a day, the records show. One document from Utah’s Statewide Information & Analysis Center coached officers on how to make facial-recognition requests; offered four tips for better facial photographs (“lighting, distance, angle, eyes”); and said the database included “over 5 million Utah driver’s license & state identification card photos,” about 2 million more than the state’s population. State officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Many of the requests for searches in Utah came from local police forces across the country seeking to find suspects who may have traveled to the state, but about half the searches came from federal agents, according to a log of the searches. The records do not provide suspect names or say whether cases ended in arrests or convictions.

Washington state’s Department of Licensing said that its “facial recognition system is designed to be an accurate, nonobtrusive fraud detection tool” and that the agency does not share use of the system with law enforcement unless compelled by court order.

Vermont officials said they stopped using facial-recognition software in 2017. That year, a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union revealed records showing that the state DMV had been conducting the searches in violation of a state law that banned technology involving “the use of biometric identifiers.” The state’s governor and attorney general came out against the face-scanning software, citing a need to balance public safety with residents’ privacy rights.

In the years before the ban, the records show, Vermont officials ran a number of face scans on driver license photos at the request of ICE agents. Investigators from a number of federal and local agencies emailed the state’s DMV with facial-recognition search requests as they pursued people accused of overstaying their visas, providing false information, stealing from stores or, in at least one case, being part of a “suspicious circumstance.”

The officers in some emails would provide descriptions of their targets: One was dubbed a “gypsy . . . scamming elderly people for money,” while another was said to have “VERY LARGE PROTRUDING EARS.” In others, DMV officials talked about the face-scanning tool as if it were the kind of awe-inspiring technical marvel most often seen on prime-time cop shows.

In one 2014 email, a police officer in the town of Manchester, Vermont, asked a DMV official to scan for a man caught on video “brazenly” stealing. The official forwarded the email to a colleague with a made-for-TV flourish, writing, “Can we play NCIS for this officer?”

Two adults and a 12-year-old were wounded in two separate shootings early Tuesday in St. Paul.

Police said the three have non-life-threatening injuries and they are investigating what led to the shootings.

At 2 a.m., a Roseville police officer driving by the Lamplighter Lounge in St. Paul, along the Roseville border, heard what sounded like gunshots in the parking lot, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman.

People were getting into vehicles and leaving. In the parking lot, the officer found a 35-year-old woman with a gunshot wound to the back, Ernster said.

Officers were told the shooting occurred in the parking lot directly in front of the Lamplighter.

St. Paul Fire Department paramedics took the woman to Regions Hospital in St. Paul.

A short time later, someone dropped off a 32-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his leg at Regions. Police believe he was shot in the same incident outside the Lamplighter, Ernster said.

Separately, just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, a 12-year-old was shot in the foot in downtown St. Paul. He was with his 15- and 19-year-old brothers when there was a conflict with people they knew, and a shot was fired, Ernster said.

Paramedics took the boy, who was wounded in the area of Cedar and Sixth streets, to a hospital for treatment.

No arrests had been in either case by Tuesday evening.

DEER PARK, Wis. — Authorities have identified the Stillwater motorcyclist killed Saturday after being struck by a New Richmond man being pursued by sheriff’s deputies.

The St. Croix County sheriff’s office said Dustin Edward Kalland, 39, died after Brandon Michael Lieffring, 37, crashed into the motorcycle Kalland was driving on Highway 46 in the village of Deer Park. Kalland was pronounced dead at the scene.

Lieffring allegedly ran from the crash and was arrested by deputies after a short foot chase. He was being held in St. Croix County jail on suspicion of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle, knowingly operating while suspended and a probation hold.

According to the sheriff’s office, the incident began at 4:12 p.m. when deputies responded to a report that a 2013 Jeep Liberty was taken without permission. A no-contact order violation also had occurred there, the complainant reported.

Deputies found the Jeep and attempted a traffic stop on Highway 65 north of New Richmond. The driver didn’t stop, prompting a pursuit.

Deputies said Lieffring passed several other vehicles on the left-hand side in the village before approaching a group of motorcycles attempting to turn left on Main Street near North Street West, where the collision occurred.

Authorities are investigating why and how a van driver slammed into a crowded bus stop shelter in north Minneapolis on Tuesday, injuring at least six people, including three critically.

The crash happened at a busy intersection at about 9:30 a.m. Metro Transit spokesman Howie Padilla said the driver, an 83-year-old man, hit the side mirror of a bus that had stopped to unload passengers, then backed up, drove forward and hit the mirror again before driving around the corner and crashing into the shelter.

“We don’t know why that happened. We would love to know that. We will know that. It is just going to take some time,” Padilla said.

The man driving the van was taken into custody and was later released while the investigation continued, Padilla said.

Images of the scene showed a van smashed against a mangled bus shelter. Shattered glass covered the sidewalk.

Padilla said all six of the victims are men. The three men critically injured were taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale. Two others were taken to Hennepin County Medical Center with injuries that were not critical. One man was treated at the scene.

A long-distance trucker from Chicago stopped into a Target store in Vadnais Heights on Sunday and started exposing himself and touching other customers inappropriately, according to criminal charges.

A woman had been in the store on the 900 block of County Road E about 30 minutes when she noticed Aaron Cecil Patton Jr. following her, she told police.

At one point, as she stopped to take a picture of an item with her phone, Patton came up behind her and said, “I’m reaching for this.” When he lifted his arm, the woman felt Patton’s genitals on her back, according to criminal charges filed against him Tuesday.

As she turned to tell Patton that his conduct was inappropriate, she noticed the fly of his pants was unzipped and his genitals exposed, the complaint said.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged the 38-year-old with fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Another customer complained to a store employee that Patton had repeatedly bumped up against her with his crotch.

When a deputy questioned him, Patton said other customers had been bumping into him, not the other way around.

The Illinois man was expected to make his first appearance on the charge sometime Tuesday afternoon.

No attorney was listed for him in court records.

Authorities are investigating the shooting death of a man found Tuesday in his West St. Paul apartment.

The man — identified by family members as 21-year-old Lawrence Renfro — was discovered dead in his main-floor unit at Oakdale Terrace apartment complex just before 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Renfro had a son, Jahir, who will turn 2-years old later this month, said his great uncle Bryant Payne.

“Everybody is traumatized over this right now,” Payne said Tuesday evening outside the apartment complex at 1940 Oakdale Ave. “I’m sad and hurt at the same time. He had a little baby that we all have to think about. It’s really sad.”

As of Tuesday evening, no one had been arrested, Interim Police Chief Brian Sturgeon said.

The body was discovered by a friend who had gone to visit the apartment, Sturgeon said. The friend called police. It was unclear when the shooting happened, he said.

Police said the man’s identity and cause of death will officially be released later by the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office.

Craig Schwantes, who lives on the second floor of the three-story apartment building, said he was up around 6 a.m. Tuesday and home all day and did not hear any loud noises or gunshots.

“It’s very strange,” he said.

Renfro moved into the apartment about two months ago and lived there with his girlfriend at the time of his death, Payne said. Renfro was a cook at the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Oakdale, his family said.

Please see the attached image for our statement regarding the homicide investigation at Oakdale Terrace apartment complex. pic.twitter.com/lGYEarVQkA

— West St. Paul Police (@WestStPaulPD) July 9, 2019

The same apartment unit — back in January and before Renfro moved in — was the site of the biggest drug seizure in Dakota County history. The bust yielded 45 pounds of methamphetamine, 15.5 kilos of cocaine and $710,000 cash.

On Tuesday, Sturgeon said the shooting and the bust, are “completely not related. That, I can guarantee.”

Sturgeon said that the man found dead Tuesday, whom he declined to identify, moved into the unit several months after the bust.

In December 2016, at age 18, Renfro was charged with felony simple robbery after allegedly snatching a purse from an 85-year-old woman outside the Target store in West St. Paul, according to a criminal complaint. His alleged accomplices — two boys, ages 16 and 17 — scanned the parking lot as Renfro came up to the woman from behind and yanked her purse from her hands with enough force that caused her to spin halfway around in a circle, the complaint said.

Court documents show that Renfro was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 120 days in Dakota County jail and five years of probation.

Officials are renewing a call for boaters to pay attention to the waves their watercraft produce after two women were seriously injured in separate incidents on the St. Croix River over the past two weeks.

On the Fourth of July, a 53-year-old woman from Albion, Iowa, suffered a serious back injury about 6:40 p.m. while boating with her husband near the Allen S. King plant in Oak Park Heights. According to police reports, the couple’s boat struck “a large, rolling wave, approximately 6 feet high … tossing (her) up in the air and then back onto the chair, landing on her back.” The woman was taken by ambulance to Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater.

About a week earlier, on June 29, a 56-year-old Chippewa Falls, Wis., woman was also taken to Lakeview Hospital for treatment of injuries after the boat her husband was operating hit the wake of another boat about 10:30 p.m.

The woman was in the bow area of the boat, “which was operating at cruising speed, when the boat hit the wake of another boat causing it to become slightly airborne and causing the victim to be tossed into the air and land back in the boat,” the police report states.

In Minnesota, it’s illegal to operate a watercraft so that its wake endangers, harasses or interferes with any person or property. Failure to comply may result in a citation from law enforcement patrols on the water and fines up to $140, depending on the county.

BUSY RIVER MAKES ENFORCEMENT TOUGHER

Officers patrolling the St. Croix have a difficult time locating offenders when the river is busy with boat traffic, said Sgt. Kyle Schenck of the Washington County sheriff’s office.

“If you’ve been out on the St. Croix River, all you see are large wakes,” Schenck said. “It’s tough to track a wake down to a boat operator to assign blame to them when there are so many boats out there. They’re not being considerate of what their wake is doing to other people.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last month launched a campaign to raise awareness of the damage large wakes on the river cause and to remind boaters of their responsibilities after receiving a growing number of complaints about excessive wakes.

The waves can cause shoreline erosion, affect water quality, create a hazard for others on the water and damage property, said Lt. Adam Block, boating law administrator for the Minnesota DNR.

Block said the recent injury accidents on the St. Croix River “illustrate how critical it is that boaters pay attention to the waves their watercraft produce. A day on the water shouldn’t result in a trip to the hospital.”

Both women who were injured were picked up by ambulance at the Sunnyside Marina in Oak Park Heights.

BE AWARE OF YOUR BOAT’S WAKE

“Both injuries occurred because a large boat threw an excessive wake in the close proximity of a smaller boat,” said Rick Chapman, the marina’s general manager. “In each case, the smaller boat captain did the right thing and steered the boat into the wake rather than taking it sideways, which potentially could have swamped them.”

Chapman said he does not think boat operators are intentionally causing large wakes.

“It’s totally people not being aware,” he said. “Many are new boaters, and they are just totally unaware of what kind of wake that boat is going to create at what speed. We’re working to educate them.”

St. Anthony police made an arrest Tuesday in connection with a suspected arson at an apartment complex.

A 31-year-old woman was booked into Ramsey County Jail Tuesday for probable cause 1st-degree arson. The case is still being investigated, according to St. Anthony police, and they had no further details Tuesday.

The fire was reported early Friday morning. Residents evacuated and no one was injured.

The fire appeared to be suspicious in nature, according to authorities, and the Minnesota State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Hennepin County Crime Lab were contacted.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but it appeared to be intentional.

A Burnsville coin dealer who admitted selling counterfeit coins was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison.

Barry Ron Skog, 68, pleaded guilty to the counterfeit coin scheme Feb. 21.He was sentenced by St. Paul District Court Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright; Assistant U.S. Attorney Manda M. Sertich prosecuted the case.

Citing court documents and Skog’s guilty plea, a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release says Skog owned a business that sold various coins and currencies and advertised in Numismatic News, a publication for coin collectors. When potential customers reached out, Skog would mail them lists of available coins, many of which were fake.

When conducting sales, Skog used the pseudonym “Ron Peterson,” even though he was the only person running the company. Skog stole over $57,000 from identified “customers” and was advertising 275 more fraudulent coins, which he would have sold for around $235,000.

The Minnesota Commerce Fraud Bureau and the Burnsville Police Department conducted this investigation.

Authorities say there may be other unidentified customers who received Skog’s counterfeit currencies. Anyone with additional information may call the Minnesota Commerce Fraud Bureau at (651) 539-1617.