DRESBACH, Minn. — Sheriff’s deputies haven’t quite sorted out some nasty roadside confrontations involving several women after dark. The women, all uncooperative, wouldn’t explain to deputies what was going on. This much is known:
7:38 p.m.: A motorist reported two women engaged in a heavy confrontation outside a car along Highway 61 in Homer. This was just south of Winona at County Road 15. The car was gone when a deputy arrived, but one of the women was standing there stranded. She was drunk and was uncooperative, refusing to explain what happened, the deputy said. The 22-year-old woman insisted on being left alone, but the deputy couldn’t leave her on the busy highway because of her level of intoxication. After almost an hour of the deputy coaxing the woman about who to contact to take her home, she said to try her mother in LaCrescent. The deputy called the mother, 28 miles away, and offered to drive the woman home. The woman resisted getting into the squad car and pushed the deputy off balance. Later, he said, he chose to spare her an assault charge and just wanted to get her to her mother.
Grassman. Her night ended badly — in jail. Still mum on why everyone so angry.
9:18 p.m.; The same deputy ran across two vehicles on a shoulder at the U.S. Highway 61 fork off Interstate 90. One vehicle matched the description of the one from Homer 1-1/2 hours earlier. The women, outside their cars, were yelling and screaming at each other and exchanging blows. As the deputy pulled up, one vehicle sped off. The remaining women, still angry, refused to explain any of their behavior.
Moments later. The deputy received a radioed report that the fleeing car had crashed in a ditch not far away on I-90. No one was injured. The driver, Shawna Lee Grassman, age 35, of Sparta, Wisconsin, was booked at the Winona County jail. The charge: Driving while impaired. She was as mum as all the other women about the night’s events.