WINONA, Minn. – A Winona man attempted suicide by barricading himself in an alley garage and setting a couch on fire. Then, he said, his survival instincts kicked in. He smashed out a window and climbed through. Meanwhile, firefighters were called to the burning and smoked-filled garage on the 600 block of West Fourth. This was about 4:15 p.m. Zayne Thomas Bowman, 23, of Winona, was taken to the hospital for leg cuts from breaking glass that required stitches. He was booked at the jail about 8 p.m. for arson. Apparently he was despondent after being kicked out of his living quarters and had been taken in temporarily, for a few days, at the house on West Fourth. When the owner was away in the afternoon, he went to the single-car garage in the alley. That’s where the fire was set. Police blocked alleys from McBride and Sioux streets for firefighters to do their work.

Burning couch. Generated lots of smoke and panicked man who had barricaded himself inside. Image: Winona Fire Department

LACROSSE, Wis. — A forensic pathologist testified that a blunt force killed a Holmen man whose wife, Lori Ann Phillips, now of Winona, is trial on a murder charge. Ross Reichard sad that blunt-force trauma occurs when flat object strikes tissue. It’s striking something that is relatively flat, like falling and hitting your head on the sidewalk, or your head hitting the windshield of a car, he said. Phillips is accused of driving a pickup truck into her husband on the driveway of their Holmen home, then driving off, spending the next few hours elsewhere, then telling police that she found him dead the next morning in a snowbank on the driveway. This was in 2019. Reichard said that the husband, Mark Phillips, also had rib fractures and lost a liter of blood. It was established that alcohol factored into his death.

Earlier: Motions argued in Winona woman’s pending murder trial

Reichard. Expert opinion: Death due to blunt force trauma.

ROCHESTER, Minn. – A Mayo Clinic doctor charged with murder in his wife’s death may have tried twice to poison her, according to newly released court documents. A woman-friend of Betty Jo Bowman told investigators that the husband had made Betty Jo  a smoothie a couple weeks before she died. The next day she asked the woman-friend  to taste the smoothie, then threw it out. Two weeks later, apparently from another smoothy made by the husband, Connor Bowman,  Betty Jodrank a lethal amount of colchicine. The court documents quote Betty Jo’s woman-friend that she was over visiting August 10, and Betty Jo asked her to try a smoothie that Connor had made. The friend called the taste “very bad — bitter and salty, not like a smoothie would be expected to taste.” The friend thought it was strange that Connor had made Betty Jo the smoothie, because, she said, he hardly ever made anything for anybody. “Out of character,” she said. Betty Jo’s friend said she joked that  Connor must be trying to poison her. Both laughed. The friend told investigators that she hadn’t thought much about the smoothie until Betty Jo died 10 days later. Bowman, arrested October 20, is in jail in lieu of $5 million bail.

Betty Jo Bowman. A day at the lake. Photo from her family’s collection.

Connor Bowman. At jail when booked for murder.

Rescue on Sanborn. No one was injured. Two dogs and severlk cats were also rescued. Image: Winona Fire Department

Cause of smoky fire not determined immeditaely

WINONA, Minn. — Flames and smoke blocked the only stairs down from the upstairs at a central Winona duplex. Two tenants. a man and a woman, climbed out a window and became trapped outside on a porch roof. Firefighters brought them down on ladders. The fire, about 8:30 a.m., was in the 150 block of East Sarnia Street behind Watkins Manor. The fire originated in an enclosed front porch. The cause was not determkend immediately

LINTON, N.D. – Consider the odds: That Valerie Weber would give birth to a daughter on her own birthday. Then consider: That the birthdate would be the same as little bundle’s maternal grandmother, It happened on October 23 at the Linton hospital 60 miles south of Bismarck. Everybody’s doing fine, including newly arrived Teegan.

Fridge purgatory. In the alley behind Volkmann’s Appliance at 109 Main Street in Winona. Disposal charge: $15 for stoves, $25 for refrigerators. Image: Steve Lunde

Earlier: Appliance buying group applauds Volkmanns

WINONA, Minn. – Police were called to the Kwik Trip at Mankato Avenue and Broadway Street after a woman tore items from a shelf, tossed them all over,  and left, apparently with some items. Police found the woman nearby.  She said she was hungry. She was issued an order not to come back.

WINONA, Minn. – The Winona City Council voted unanimously to remove its calendar restrictions on food truck vendors. The trucks now can operate year-round. Food trucks had been allowed only from March to October. The calendar restriction was last of rules created by the Council at behest of traditional brick-and-mortar restaurateurs who didn’t want mobile competition.

Earlier: Proposal: Let there be more food trucks

Earlier: City lifts limits on food truck sites

CENTERVILLE, Wis.  – Owners Andy and Tracy Todd and eight well-wishers put shovels to ground in a ceremony to mark the start of rebuilding Toad’s Cove convenience store and fueling stop. Fire destroyed the busy Centervlle lanmark in May.The Todds’ target to reopen: May 2004.

Earlier: Contractors lined up to rebuild Toad’s Cove

Earlier: Cigarette blamed for Toad’s Cove destruction

Earlier: Toad’s Cove in Centerville pumping gas again

Earlier: Toad’s Cove car wash survived fire, open again

Earlier: Traffic restored around Toad’s fire in Centerville

Earlier: Fire takes out Toad’s Cove near Centerville crossroads

ROCHESTER, Minn. – An Olmsted County sheriff’s jailer was caught prowling online for underage girls for sex, according to a criminal complaint. Mathew Adamson, 44, didn’t know he was chatting with an officer working a sting for online pedophiles, the complaint said. The officer pretended to be a13-year-old girl. The complaint said Adamson offered to buy her alcohol if she would do adult-like sexual acts with him. Adamsin also was in similar communication with another investigator posing as 14 years old, the complaint said. At one point, according to the complaint, Adamson sent a photo of himself in a curious setting — an Olmsted County courtroom. He was arrested at a rendezvous last week and arraigned. Bail was set at $10,000.  He has since resigned.

Adamson. No, she wasn’t 13. No, she wasn’t a girl. For him, the sting went badly.

Fleeting harbor full up. The towboat Roy Claveries maneuvers yet more barges into the crowded Winona fleeting harbor. Low water has clogged the lower Mississippi and stranded hundreds of unloaded barges upriver, this as the shipping season nears its end. The U.S. Army Corps has begun closing locks in preparation for winter. Image: Steve Lunde

Earlier: Winter cometh: Army Corps closes first locks

Earlier: Low Mississippi levels again hinder farm shipping

ROCHESTER, Minn. – A Mayo Clinic nurse recognized the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning in a girl at the LaQuinta Hotel pool swimming pool Saturday and began resuscitation, perhaps saving the girl’s life. Television station KTTC had reporters at the scene and sat nurse Cindy Clement down afterward with her partner, Troy Donahue, to recoint what happened. Donahue and Clement were at the hotel for his granddaughter’s first birthday party. “I went for a walk down to the pool and looked in and a couple of women were screaming,” Donahue said. “I looked and saw a child on the ground. People were running everywhere. I went and got my girlfriend.” Clement, a licensed Practical nurse at Mayo, saw the child she wasn’t breathing. Her lips were blue,.Clement: “I didn’t feel a pulse on her, so I started CPR. And she came back after less than a minute but she still wouldn’t wake up.” Clement said she thought the girl had been in the pool but found out later from police that the girl had been walking around and passed out. Four people, including the girl, were hospitalized with CO1 poisoning symptoms.

Earlier: CO1 scare: Hotel guests scram after symptoms

Poolside heroes. He saw girl in distress, summoned his girlfriend nurse. She revived girl whose breathing had stopped and whose lips had turned blue.

LACRESCENT, Minn. – Deputies were called to an unusual congregation of cars coming and going on the Apple Blossom Drive overlook on the Winona County side of the county line. It sure looks like drug-trading was going on, the caller said. The overlook was quiet when deputies arrived.

HAYFIELD, Minn. – The Dodge County sheriff, Scott Rose, took a stun-gun taser shot at a fund-raiser. Two deputies held him against a wall and a sheriff’s office dispatcher fired the taser and held the trigger five seconds. Rose recoiled in pain and gritted as the disabling electrical current ripped through his body. When it was over, Rose, fully recovered, said he couldn’t be more pleased. This happened at an event to raise money for the dispatcher, Dawn Frieberg, an 18-year veteran at the sheriff’s office who is undergoing costly cancer treatment. A deputy had come up with the tasering idea spontaneously to accelerate the fund-raising. With 35 minutes left in the fundraiser. Rose agreed: “OK. If you can raise $5,000 in 35 minutes, I’ll take the five seconds.” It was Frieberg, clad in pink, who pulled the trigger. Rose, wearing  a “We Love D” t-shirt, took the shot in the chest from 10 feet. In those 35 minutes leading up to the taser shot, well-wishers pitched in $7,000. The total take for the event: $17,000.

Why is this man not smiling. It’s Sheriff Scott Rose, and he’s being tasered at the Village Pub.

ALEXANDRIA, Minn. – State wildlife experts hope they have caught an invasion of a dreaded species of crayfish in time. Two signal crayfish were discovered in Lake Winna near Alexandria in western Minnesota. No, it’s a different Lake Winona. There are two. A commercial harvester contacted the state Natural Resources department aftert rapping two signal crayfish. The agency then found eight others in the lake and in two connected lakes. One ofh 10 was an adult female, but there was no evidence of reproduction, the agency said. No eggs or juveniles were found. Signal crayfish more aggressive than native Minnesota crayfish. The fear is that they could outcompete native species for food and habitat. They can crawl over land at night and during wet weather.

Signal crayfish. Bluish-brown to reddish-brown with patches near the hinges of their claws that resemble a signal flag. At 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 inches they are larger native crayfish.

ROLLINGSTONE Minn. – A Wisconsin man was arrested aftre a Rollingstone woman called police to report that her estranged husband had thratened to kill her and bury her. Arrested was Salvadore Hernandez Lopez, 31. This was about 1:50 a.m. on Main Sttreet. Deputies said he gave them a. false name to begin with.

Hernandes-Lopez. Booked for threatening violence with reckless disregard; a continuing pattern of domestic assault, and giving officers a false name.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Army Corps of Engineers is waiving day use fees at its 2,800 recreation areas nationwide in observance of Veterans Day on Saturday. These include 49 recreation areas in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The waiver covers fees for boat launch ramps and swimming beaches. The Corps began the Veterans Day fee waiver in 2006.