MINNEAPOLIS — A 66-year-old clerk at a small Loring Park grocery store died after being stabbed through his abdomen with a broken-off golf club at the checkout counter. Robert Skafte was in a pool of blood but stll upright on one knee when a neighbor found him. “Robert was still conscious and talking,” Tony Gutoski told a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter. Gutoski quoted Skafte that a man had been in the store earlier and “acting crazy” and came back and attacked. Skafte said he kept fighting but didn’t know what happened. Those were his last words. He lost consciousness as an ambulance crew carried him out. He died at a hospital. This was about 1 p.m. Police said the assailant fled. The broken-off head of the golf club was on the floor behind the counter, Gutoski said. Police called the attack grotesque.
Oak Park Grocery. Quiet and tidy step-down shop. Catered to neighborhood shoppers in the Loring Park apartment area near downtown.