WINONA, Minn. – A Winona driver was arrested on the West Side with too much alcohol in her blood to be driving. Jennifer Jolean Ellefson, 45, was booked on an elevated drunken driving charge because this wasn’t her first time. Ellefson field-tested for a blood-alcohol level of 0.14%, police said. At the jail house a follow-up test showed 0.17%, more than double what’s allowed. She admitted to two or three beers, police said. The stop was about1:40 a.m. at Fourth and McBride streets.

WINONA, Minn. – A police officer saw a moped driver weaving all over the street near Brewski Drive and Menard Lane on the Far East End retail area. He followed a few blocks to the Walmart parking lot, then activated his lights and siren. The moped buzzed off . The officer followed several more blocks to the Fleet Farm parking lot and then watched as the moped exited onto U.S. Highway 61 into the wrong lane.  Wrong way! The officer cut off the chase rather than risk a head-on collision. This was about 1:15 a.m. The moped disappeared into the night;

WINONA, Minn. – Police stopped a Winona woman from getting inside a Mankato Avenue coin laundry after hours. Officers said Kayla Mae Gile, 32, explained that she had left personal items in the shop and wanted to retrieve them. She was confused and speech slurred and something seem not right, officers said. Then they learned from a quick records check that Gile had been banned from the shop four times in the last year. She was cbarged with trespass a fifth time. This was about 11:15 p.m. The arrest wasn’t easy,  police said. She screamed and ran onto traffic on Mankato. Officers caught and suppressed her. Charges included obstructing arrest.

Laundromat. 350 Mankato Avenue.

LACROSSE, Wis. – A LaCrosse man and woman were arrested for the death of a 15-month infant in September. The arrest warrants charge Lavon Liggins, 43, and Brittany M. Basley, 34, with child neglect. Drugs were a factor in the death, investigators said. Police had been called to the couple’s place for the child, who officers said was blue and not breathing.

ROCHESTER, Minn. – Five people escaped a fire that destroyed a mobile home at Parkside Trailer Park in southeast Rochester. There were no injuries. When fire crews arrived, flams ad smoke already were pouring from the roof and windows. Crews deployed two attack lines, first to extinguish the fire from the exterior, then moving to the interior. The remains were ventilated to remove smoke and toxic gases.

Total loss. Firefighters responded in 95-degree afternoon heat with high humidity. Address: 2000 block of Park Lane Southeast. Image: Rochester Fire Department

Main trails. The Winona bluffs are criss-crossed with hiking trails, some of which double for cross-country skiing in winter. In red are major hiking trails in the Sugar Loaf area. Trails in this area are rigorous climbs.

Hiker carried down with C-collar, longboard, basket

DAKOTA, Minn. – Power was knocked out for a few houses in Dakota when a driver crashed into a utility pole abut 11:15 a.m. The driver told deputies he fell asleep driving home from a 12-hour shift. He wasn’t hurt. This was at 1020 River Street.

HOKAH. Minn. – An Iowa woman was injured when her small car and an oversize pickup collided southwest of Hokah on State Highway 44. Allyvia Lucille Martin, 21, of Lansing, was taken 15 miles to a LaCrosse hospital. Her injuries appeared non-life threatening, police said. She was driving a 2015 Volkswagen Jetta whose airbag deployed. Both vehicles were southbound toward Caledonia on a straight stretch. The other driver, Steven Scott Redford, 74, of Branson, Missouri, in a 2024 GMC Yukon, was unhurt. The crash was about 11:05 a.m. Near Indian Springs Road.

HUDSON, Wis.  – A Twin Cities manufacturing engineer, Nicolae Miu, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for a 2022 knifing attack on tubers on the Apple River, including one tuber who died. Judge R. Michael Waterman said the murder charge alone could have meant a 45-year sentence max under judicial guidelines but he settled on 20 years. In total, however, the sentence came to 45 years with the other convictions from the bloody attacks. Miu is 54 years old. With good behavior, he could be released by age 72. Judge Waterman acknowledged that Miu had lived a positive life but departed downward on that day on the Apple River. Mie was convicted by a St. Croix County jury in April for the murder of 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and stabbing four others. The incident was on the river in July 2022.

Earlier: Verdict: Guilty in bloody Apple River chaos

Earlier: Video anyone, of Apple River tubing attack?

Earlier: Bail at $1 million in tubing knife attacks

Earlier: Five Apple River tubers stabbed, one fatally

WABASHA. Minn. – Nobody seriously expects that a Wabasha bookkeeper, Sharon Schmalzriedt, will ever repay the $3.7 million she embezzled from a Lewiston company – even though a judge has ordered her to return the money. The problem: She neither kept the money nor spent it on anything tangible and recoverable. Instead she passed it all on to an online scammer who pretended be in love with her and who has proven impossible to track. Meanwhile, her former employer, National Chemical of Lewiston, has floundered in bankruptcy caused by the $3.7  million loss that went undetected over 2-1/2 years. “It’s a large, eye-popping number,” Wabasha County prosecutor Matthew Stinson said in a Rochester Post Bulletin interview. He’s sure the scam was the largest ever in Wabasha County, population 21,000.  And perhaps also in neighboring Winona County, population 49,000, where National Chemical is located. It was in April that Judge Christopher Neisen in Wabasha sentenced Schmalzriedt to five years probation. Normally, Stinson said, an embezzler would work out a repayment schedule with a probation officer. The repayment would be over the probation period and within the embezzler’s income. That, he said, would be $750,000 per year for Schmalzriedt, who now is 62 years old. The median annual income in Wabasha County is less than $48,000. So where’s the stolen money? Schmalzriedt’s online amour, who called himself Erik Lockwood, has it. Where’s he? Somewhere in Africa, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which has tied to track him down. The trail has gone cold. Very cold.

Earlier: $3.7 million embezzler excused from prison time

Earlier: Embezzler offers deal for $3.7 million Lewiston theft

Earlier: Wabasha bookkeeper blamed for $3.7 million embezzlement

WINONA, Minn. – The Fire Department reported 37 emergency medical calls plus 13 fire calls in recent days:

> Tuesday, July 30: 4 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

> Monday, July 29: 8 medical calls plus no fire call.

> Sunday, July 28: 9 medical calls plus 4 fire calls.

> Saturday, July 27: 2 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Friday, J July 26: 7 medical calls plus 1 fire calls.

> Thursday, J July 25: 4 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Wednesday, July 24: 3 medical calls plus 3 fire calls.

Earlier: Emergency, fire crews make 52 calls

NEW YORK – the discount airline JetBlue announced an end to its once-a-day Minneapolis-Boston trips. The route has underperformed for want of customer demand, said Joanna Geraghty, the airline’s new chief executive. By dropping MSP, as well as several other Midwest destinations, JetBue is focusing in its East Coast business, Geraghty said. The airline, founded in1998, has never returned a profit.

WINONA, Minn. – Police kicked in the door of bedroom after a man being arrested for a domestic assault fled inside and locked the door. Aaron Thomas Swedberg. 36, surrendered without further resistance as police barged through the busted door. This was about 11:45 p.m. in the 350 block of East Sanborn. Police were responding to a 911 call from a woman who was worried about a girlfriend at the Sanborn address. Officers found the woman in the backyard with red marks on her ncek. Inside they found Swedberg, who denied an attack but then couldn’t explain why the woman’s cellphone was in the toilet. As he was being cuffed, Swedberg tensed and fled to the bedroom, police said. The woman said Swedberg had pushed her hard and embedded fingers into the back of her neck. It was painful and she was frightened, she said

Swedberg. Booked for assault, resisting police.

WINONA, Minn. –  A Wisconsin man, apparently unprovoked, knocked a hat off the head of another man getting off an elevator at a downtown apartment building. The victim told police he had seen the other guy around but didn’t know him. Police found surveillance video of the incident and arrested Timothy Mitchell Semling, 34, of Arcadia. He admitted to the deed, police said. He was charged with disorderly conduct. In processing the case, police said they discovered Semling was wanted in Olmsted County, also for disorderly conduct.

Military rule

U.S. Army Regulation 670-1: Removing a beret, hat or other headgear is a sign of respect to others. Remove your headgear indoors.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A Lewiston man asked that his bail on two counts of sexual conduct with children be reduced from $500,000. The judge took the request under advisement. Cody James Krismer, 32, had been arrested on basis of a complaint from a woman who said she learned about the transgressions in June.  A police investigation ensued. The criminal complaint identified the children as under 13 and under 11. Over the years Krismer has lived in Lake City, Winona and Zumbro Falls. He has served jail time for assault, drggs nnd drunken driving.

Krismer. Accused of indecent contact with minors in Olmsted County.