WINONA, Minn. – City and county policde officers converged on the downtown bar Gabby’s – a place with a troubled record for laxity in admitting minors and for keep pouring for already-drunk customers. This time the disturbance had settled down before officers arrived. This was about 10:55 p.m. Address: 179 East Thitrd Street.

Earlier: Six under-age boozers nicked at Gabby’s

Earlier: Liquored-up at Gabby’s: Beef goes into the street

Hockey (men): Bethel of St. Paul 6, Saint Mary’s 3

Hockey (women): Bethel of St. Paul 3, Saint Mary’s 1

A shepherd’s own sidecar. Goggles in place for the zip home. Image: Steve Lunde

MASON CITY, Iowa – Police don’t want public access to a search warrant from seven years ago in their investigation into the disappearance and presumed slaying of television anchor Jodi Huisentruit almost 30 years ago. County Attorney Carlyle Dalen told a judge that police still regard the case as open. Implicit in the police position is that the contents of the search warrant, issued in 2017, could tip the guilty person. Police acknowledge the warrant was a dead-end. Even so, the wararnt would include the police rationale to the judge at time on why they needed authorization for the search.

Earlier: Family seeks police secrets in TV anchor case

One tenant injured. But not seriously when evacuating the smoke-filling structure In the 400 block of Washington Street opposite the Main Square West construction site. The alarm was about 4 o’clock. Fire Chief Joel Corcoran said fire ran up an exterior wall into the attic, then quickly filled the building with smoke. Fire damage was worst to a vacant apartment but smoke damage was everywhere, the chef said. The injured person was taken to the hospital for evaluation. Image: Winona Fire

WINONA, Minn. – After a bright suny day, a high pressure system will move into the region overnight. Light snow is predicted by the the National Weather Service. The snow will thicken Saturday morning with perhaps two inches, forecasters said. Highs Saturday: Mid-20s with brisk breezes.

NODINE, Minn. – Fire crews put out a small grass fire where a disabled 18-wheeler had pulled off Interstate 90 after losing a drive shaft. The firefighters, from Nodine and Dakota quickly doused the flames. No one was hurt. This was about 1:50 a.m. just east of the Nodine exit.

WINONA, Minn. – A Goodview woman was stopped for erratic driving but smelled so heavily of alcohol and marijuana that the officer checked her blood-alcohol level. Delaney Rae Breen, 21, blew 0.15% into a breathalyzer — almost twice what’s allowed. The officer said Breen admitted to a shot of alcohol 1-1/2 hours earlier. Later, the officer said, she admitted there may have been a vodka cranberry too. Her blood-alcohol was rechecked at the jail and had climbed to 0.16%. The stop was about 1:20 a.m. The officer had been following Breen from downtown, where he said she ran a stop light, and then was speeding on Riverview Drive.

Breen. Blood tests suggest a memory lapse about how much she had been drinking.

Car erupts in flames. In a fueling lane at the Kwik Trip on Fourth Street in Austin. A police officer who happened to be nearby steered his squad car into the flames and bumper to bumper shoved the flaming car away from the gas pumps. The pumps sit atop underground tanks each with 12,000 to 24,000 gallons of fuel. Firefighters were called to put out the fire in the car. Image: Carol Mills

WINONA, Minn. – A 16-year-old boy was found vaping in a bathroom at Winona High School. Police were called. The boy was cited as too young to be using tobacco. He was sent home with a parent. This was about 1:30 p.m.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. —  An Eau Claire man was  charges with horrendous corporal punishment of children. The allegations include “militaristic” discipline — forcing the children to do push-ups, to stand against a wall holding their arms out until they cried, and to stand outside in freezing weather for extended periods. On some occasions, according the criminal complaint, Daniel Tlusty, age 41, would wake the children in the middle of the night for punishment. The charges:

> Four counts of repeated physical abuse causing bodily harm.

> Two counts of recklessly endangerment with a dangerous weapon.

According to the court documents, Tlusty forced one child to eat their own feces after an accident. Also: Spanking a child with a wrench until they were unable to sit down for week. Tlusty denied some allegations to investigator. Only “an open-handed swat on the butt,” he said. He also was accused of driving drunk and recklessly with the children on board. The abuses happened between 2018 and 2024, according to documents. The children’s ages ranged from 8 to 13 when interviewed by police. Bail was set at $5,000. Tlusty, however, is already in prison on a 4-1/2 year sentence for a seventh drunken driving.

Tlusty. Police claim a litany of torturous parenting practices with kids.

WEST CONCORD, Minn. – A West Concordd woman was injured seriously when she tried to avoid a snowplow stopped on the right-of-way and ended up in a ditch. Hannah Mickelson, 24, was airlifted 23 miles to a Rochester hospital with a back fracture, pelvis fractures, and a broken arm. The crash was about 7 a.m. on Dodge County Road 7 near the junction to Kasson. Deputies described what happened this way:

> Mckelson was driving to her job as a school teacher in Kasson.

> A snowplow had stopped to assist the driver of a milk tanker truck that already was in the ditch.

> Mickelson swerved to avoid he plow, but one corner of the plow went into her passenger door.

> She spun into the ditch.

The road was icy, deputies said. Mickelson’s injuries were described as “very serious but not life-threatening.”

NEW YORK – Experts have taken a second look at a purported Vincent Van Gogh painting that showed up in the ritzy Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka and declared it’s authenticity. If so, the impressionistic work, called “Elimar,” may be worth $15 million. It was purchased for less than $50 eight years ago by a Twin Cities antiques dealer at a garage sale in Minnetonka. The painting has a rich and mysterious past:

> If authentic, “Elimar” was painted Van Gogh probably between 1889 and 1890 when he was a self-admitted suicidal patient at a psychiatric asylum in southern France. It was a period when he created roughly 150 paintings, including the masterpieces “Irises,” “Almond Blossom” and “The Starry Night.”

> No one seems quite sure when “Elimar” — again, if authentic — disappeared into the often-murky arts trading market. Also, Europe suffered two major wars in the intervening century with massive dislocations. It’s possible that an American soldier found the painting and took it home after hostilities, probably not realizing its significance.

> At some point the painting, on a relatively small canvas at 18 by 16-1/2 inches, ended up at a household in Minnetonka.

> In 2016 a Twin Cities antique dealer bought the painting for less than $50 at a garage sale, apparently unaware it could be a Van Gogh.

> By 2018 the Twin Cities antiques dealer asked the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for an evaluation.

“Elimar.” Portrays a somber-looking man with a white beard and with a pipe in his mouth and a fur hat. He is repairing his net next to an empty shoreline with the word “Elimar” — likely his name = — scrawled in the lower right corner.  The painting is a three-quarter that was common with Van Gogh.  A textbook analysis on “”Elimar”: “This moving likeness embodies Van Gogh’s recurring theme of redemption, a concept frequently discussed in his letters and art. Through ‘Elimar,’ Van Gogh creates a form of spiritual self-portrait, showing himself as  as he wished to be remembered.”

> Three months later the Museum responded: “We have carefully examined the material you supplied to us and are of the opinion, based on stylistic features, that your work cannot be attributed to Vincent Van Gogh.” The museum prides itself on “rigorous procedure” albeit traditional  methods to authenticate possible Van Goghs.> In 2019 a New York art investment firm, LMI Group International, acquired the work and commissioned a group of 20 conservators, scientists, historians and a patent attorney for a second opinion by looking again at not only stylistic clues but also applying recently developed tools in arts forensics.

> In 2025 LMI released a 458-page report that declared the Minnetonka “Elimar,” was indeed a Van Gogh’s missing umber.151. The report cited stylistically distinct elements that appear throughout Van Gogh’s oeuvre, including marks under the eyes, marks at the corner of the mouth, eyelashes, whites of the eyes often in blue or green, a pronounced nasal-labial line, odd ear planes, and the color of cuff set off from the sleeve. Further, the LMI report said, a red hair that was embedded partially in a corner of the painting was confirmed from a man. Van Gogh had red hair. Also, a finish made of egg white was something that Van Gogh used. Too, the thread count in the canvas matched those made during Van Gogh’s time, as did the pigments used to paint the work — except one, the organic compound PR-40, which hadn’t been thought to be available Van Gogh’s time.  PR-40 in the sky of the portrait usually is credited to a French patent from 1905 and 1906. But the LMI Group traced  PR-40 to a 1883 patent to an inventor n a Paris suburb. Van Gogh’s brother Theo, who lived in Paris, regularly supplied him with paint. As a result, conservators can now date and authenticate works with this pigment to the late 19th instead of the early 20th, century.

> So is the Minnetonka “Elimar” a fake or real? And is it really worth $15 million. Déjà vu, the final ruling will need to come the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.