College scores
Baseball: Winona State and Concordia of St. Paul, cancelled
Softball: Winona State and St. Cloud State, cancelled
Softball: Winona State and St. Cloud State, cancelled, doubleheader
Zumbrota officer, a war vet, dies after PTSD struggles
ZUMBROTA, Minn. — The Zumbrota Police Department announced the death of former officer Gary Schroeder, who had served 18 years before retiring medically in 2020 with post-traumatic syndrome disorder from military service. Death was suicide. He was 46.
Schroeder. The announcement noted his PTSD struggles and recalled his hearty laugh and deep love of Zumbrota.
City waives height limit for Riverview Flats
WINONA, Minn. – The City Council voted 5-2 to allow a five-story apartment house to be built overlooking the Mississippi River at Huff Street. The decision settled a long-running controversy about relaxing architectural standards that forbidding structures that limit river views. The development company, Whitewater Properties, had argued originally that it needed 63 units to make the building economically feasible on a narrow plot, which meant five stories and 60-plus feet of height. Whitewater jiggled the plan in a repeated applications to the zoning board. The final plan, as approved by the City Council, allows a height variance. It is rare for the Council to overturn a negative recommendation from the zoning board. The zoning board had been steadfast against a variance. The zoning board also had a concern that the building would create a blind for eastbound motorists at the 90-degree Riverview Drive turn into Huff Street at the Union Pacific rail crossing.
Early architect’s schematic. A 63-unit mix of three-bedroom, two-bedroom, one-bedroom and studio apartments.
Problem corner. The Riverview Flats apartment building would be squeezed behind Riverview Drive and Union Pacific’s spur that serves East End elevators and factories. The building will create a blind corner.
Juul caves to Minnesota in anti-vaping case
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Vaping device marketer Juul Labs has thrown in the towel. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced that Juul has settled a state suit for luring young people dishonestly and dangerously into vaping habits. The state, under Ellison, had sought $100-plus million. How much is the settlement? The attorney general said that details are being worked out. Terms will be confidential until formal papers are publicly filed with the court in 30 days, Ellison said. The settlement came three weeks into a high-stakes trial in Minneapolis. Juul and its partner, the tobacco company Altria (formerly Phillip Morris), had contested the state’s charges.
Earlier: Historic trial: Minnesota takes on E-cig maker Juul
Verbatim
The Minnesota case against Jul was the first of thousands nationwide to go to trial. In Washington Juul announced: “We have now settled with 48 states and territories, providing over $1 billion to participating states to further combat underage use and develop cessation programs. This is in addition to our global resolution of the U.S. private litigation that covers more than 5,000 cases brought by approximately 10,000 plaintiffs.” The largest pre-trial settlement was last week for $462 million to six states and the District of Columbia.
Lewiston driver hurt in Waseca County wreck
PEMBERTON, Minn. – A Lewiston man driving a van collided with a semi-tuck north of Pemberton and was airlifted 120 miles to a Rochester hospital. Ryan Neyers, 35, suffered non-life threatening injuries, Waseca County deputies said. The semi driver, Francis Allan Billmeier, 34, of RedwoodF alls, was unhurt. The vehicles collided from opposite directions on a straight stretch of two-lane Highway 83 about 1:20 p.m. Pavement was dry. Neyers was driving a 023 Ram van. The truck was a 2023 Peterbilt.
Flood waters swamping Bass Camp
MINNESOTA CITY, Minn. – The Mississippi River surging through Lock and Dam 5 at Minnesota City backed up into the Bass Camp recreational trailer park. The managers asked the Sheriff’s Office to help contact owners of trailers to come and retrieve them before it was too late. At the dam the river was at 665 feet above sea level. The usual range is 657 to 660. The current was 165 cubic feet per second. The usual is 93 to 135.
Chauvin appeal fizzles: Prison term still 22 years
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The white Minneapolis cop who choked a black man to death with a knee, Derek Chauvin, has lost an appeal of his 22-year murder conviction. The Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the most serious murder conviction against Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd in 2020. The death fueled racial tensions and national protests against excessive policing. Chauvin had asked the appeals court to throw out his convictions for several reasons. These included massive pretrial publicity. Representing the state against Chauvin’s appeal, Neal Katyal, argued that Chauvin got “one of the most transparent and thorough trials in our nation’s history.”
Earlier: Chauvin update: $9 million to brutality victims
Earlier: Overzealous cop Chauvin to Arizona prison
Earlier: More prison for killer-cop Chauvin
Earlier: Judge OK’s Chauvin plea deal in civil case
Storm presses budding trees past break-point
WITOKA, Minn. – A power line snapped and sparked when a tree slammed down on County 17 near Witoka. There was no fire, no injuries. Utility crews also were called over the weekend to other power lines cut by falling trees and limbs elsewhere in Winona County. Sheriff’s deputies and city police counted 18 calls for road hazards that had to be removed. Ssome were tree limbs, some power lines. The hazards also included cars in ditches. Some cars were blocking roads. Most motorist issues were in the Garvin Heights neighborhood, which is reached mostly by a narrow, curvy and steep grade up from Huff Street. On Highway 61 in Minnesota City a truck’s semi-trailer glanced into snowplow. The driver, perhaps not even knowing what happened, kept on going. There were no juries. The downed trees and limbs, still weak from winter, snapped in stiff winds during the late spring storm. Trees were strained by the heavy wet snow that packed fast to branches and limbs and weighed them down.
Country path littered. Birches were especially vulnerable to weighty snow packed solid on branches. Ones on roads, being light, were removed easily. Image: Steve Lunde
Plea deal offered in Austin child-porn case
AUSTIN, Minn. – An Austin school teaching aide accused of uploading child pornography, including images of girls as young as 4, is going to court with a plea deal. Vincent Askelson, 31, said he will plead guilty to possessing child pornography if other charges are dropped. He said he’s willing to accept a three-year prison term. When arrested in Ociber, Akelson was suspended from his school job. The school district said there was evidence that children in Austin schools were exploited.
Ackelson. Seized at his home were a laptop, a tablet, and two cell phones.
Spring storm exceeds forecast: Heavy, wet
TAYLOR, Wis. – Forecasters missed it. They said to expect as much as eight inches of snow – and less most places. But in Taylor in Jackson County, Wisconsin, there was almost 16 inches at Julie and Leif Olson’s place just outside town. . It was perhaps the biggest accumulation of the year from a single storm, in Taylor anyway.
Image: Leif Olson
School closings, delays
> Alma, two-hour delay.
> Arcadia, closed.
> Black River Falls, closed.
> Blair-Taylor, closed.
> Caledonia, closed.
> Cochrane-Fountain City, two-hour delay.
> Dover-Eyota, two-hour helay.
> Fillmore Central, two-our delay.
> Fillmore County, two-our delay.
> Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau, closed.
> Holmen, closed.
> Houston, two-hour delay.
> Independence, closed.
> Independence and LaCrosse (Western Technical), closed.
> LaCresent-Hokah, closed.
> Lanesboro, two-hour delay.
> Lewiston-Altura, two-hour delay.
>Mabel-Canton, two-hour delay.
> Melrose-Mindoro, closed.
> Mondovi, closed.
> Nodine (St. John’s Lutheran), closed.
> Onalaska, closed.
> Onalaska Lutheran, closed.
> Pepin, two-hour delay.
> Plainview-Elgin-Millville, two-hur delay.
> Ridgeway, closed.
> Rushford, two-hour delay.
> Spring Grove, two-hour delay.
> St. Charles, two-hour delay.
> Whitehall, closed.
> Winona, two-hour delay.
Asleep in parked van, then arrested
WINONA, Minn. – A Winona woman found impaired in a parked minivan about 4 a.m. admitted she had two shots and mixed drinks the night before, police said. At the jail she refused a blood-alcohol test, but officers found 0.57 grams of cocaine in a zip-lock baggie. Jessica Karina Delgado, 27, had been found parked in the 1850 block of West Fifth Street.
Delgado. Booked for drunken driving, for possessing illicit drugs, and refusing a blood-alcohol test.
Intruder upturns mattress: An obscure message?
WINONA, Minn. – A woman returned to her apartment about 10:30 p.m. to find her mattress turned up with stuff spilled all over it. She wasn’t sure what. The place was also torn up, she said. The woman told police she suspected an ex-girl-friend of a man she was dating. The apartment, in the 200 block of West Seventh Street, was unlocked, she told police.
College scores
Baseball: Saint Mary’s 9, Macalaster 8
Baseball: Saint Mary’s 5, Macalaster 2, doubleheader
Softball: UW-LaCrosse and St. Scholastica, postponed
Softball: UW-LaCrosse and St. Scholastica, doubleheader postponed
Tennis (women): Winona State 6, MSU-Moorhead 1
Not kidding: Our mid-April Christmas scene
Sagging birch. Boughs that were about to bud for spring suddenly were heavy with wet snow. Some parts of Winona County were expected to have eight inches in this unseasonal surprise. Image: Steve Lunde
Deputy killed in shootout on domestic violence call
CYRUS, Minn. – A sheriff’s deputy and a man being arrested at his apartment were shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire. Two other officers were wounded. The slain deputy, Joshua Owen, 44, died at a hospital. The names of the other officers and the man being arrested were not released immediately. The shooting began about 7:30 p.m. when the officers told a man that he was going to be arrested for domestic assault. The man pulled a handgun and began firing. All three officers were wearing body cams, said Pope County Sheriff Tim Riley in the county seat, Glenwood, 18 miles away. Cyrus, population 300, is 35 miles southwest of Alexandria.
Owen. With the Pope County sheriff’s office 12 years. Smiling here with K-9 officer Karma.
Car slams into I-90 culvert; driver hurt
STEWARTVILLE, Minn. — An Iowa woman was injured and taken 14 miles to a Rochester hospital after her car left Interstate 90 and struck a culvert. Tina Anne Poland,50, of Webster City, Iowa, suffered non-life threatening injuries, the State Patrol said. The accident was blamed on snow and ice on the I-90 underpass at State Highway 30. She was heading east in a 2015 Toyota Scion. There had been a similar accident\t at the same spot, also due to ice, an hour earlier.
Almost halfway, swans take Wisconsin breather
Just passing through. Swans found open water amid thin ice recently on Lake Henry at Blair in Trempealeau County. Please, dear friends, have a safe journey the rest of your way to the Canadian Arctic. Yes, they are snowbirds. They’ve wintered 1,200 miles from Blair in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia. They still have 1,500 miles to go. Image: Leif Olson
Injury on icy I-90 wreck near Stewartville
STEWARTVILLE, Minn. – A car went out of control on snow and ice on Interstate 90 and struck a guardrail, injuring a passenger. Omar Teniente Guzman, 26, of High Forest, was taken 14 miles to a Rochester hospital with what appeared sustainable injuries. The driver, Tina Marie Rodriguez, 50, of High Forest, was unhurt. The accident was about 6:05 p.m. in High Forest Township at the I-90 Stewartville exits. The vehicle, a 2020 Ford Edge, was eastbound.
Food for the beer to wash down at Stockton bar
Handy at front door. Eatin’ out between sips at the Stockton Bar on Highway 14. It’s like the Good Humor man’s ice cream truck of yore — but for grown-ups. Image: Steve Lunde
Arrest in “rolling domestic assault” case
HOMER, Minn. – A Wisconsin man was arrested after a woman claimed he held her captive in his car while driving around and beat her repeatedly even as she wsas trying to make a 911 emergency call to police. Deputies took Rickey Karl Beek, 68, of Waupon, into custody about 11:05 a.m. at the south end of Old Homer Road. He was charged with what police call “rolling domestic assault.” The charges recommended to the county attorney for prosecution: False imprisonment, assault, and interference with an emergency call.
Beek. A fist assault in the car went on about 15 minutes, says complainant.
Arrest ends neighborhood scare; AR-15 seized
BYRON, Minn. – A Byron man was arrested without resistance after a report that a man with an assault rifle was headed to a Northwest Side house to shoot and kill people. About the same time police received a call from a woman that the man already was inside her house. Deputies got the woman and others out, evacuated nearby houses, and set up a perimeter. The intruder apparently was passed out drunk in a bedroom, but woke up to a police bullhorn to come out. He did. Arrested and taken 12 miles to the Olmsted County jail in Rochester. was Andrew Gerhardt, 36, of Byron. From the initial call to the arrest was 9:19 p.m. to 12:50 a.m. Confiscated were an AR-15 and a shotgun.
Gerhardt. Records show that Gerhardt a felon prohibited from possessing firearms. The arrest was in the 100 block of Ninth Street Northwest.
Party’s over: Who forgot to dim the lights?
Glowing warm on a dark and stormy night. A string of creekside party lights still bright at a break during a mid-April snow storm. On Peterson Creek upstream from Winona County’s Farmers Park. Image: Steve Lunde
Burglary in Mankato Avenue marijuana quest
WINONA, Minn. – A woman reported an ex-boyfriend busted into her place as she was sleeping and asked where the marijuana was. The woman said she told him but he couldn’t find it. After an exchange of words, he left, smashing a window screen on his way out, she told police. This about 1:25 a.m. in the 400 block of Mankato Avenue. Police found the door jam broken and the screened window smashed.
Why Those “California stops?” Brakes bad, he said
WINONA, Minn. – A police officer watched the car ahead of him slide through three stop signs, each time stopping in the middle of the intersection. “You been drinking?” the officer asked. “No,” said the driver. “Brakes bad.” This was about 1:25 a.m. at Broadway and Washington Street, not far from downtown. There had been signs that James Imani Kelley, 21, of Winona, was drinking — slurred speech, bloodshot and watery eyes, and a body odor that police officers have come to recognize at that hour. Kelley tested for 0.08% blood-alcohol – at the threshold for impairment. He was cited and released.
One night in Winona: Bar service to minors
WINONA, Minn. – In its first compliance check of the season, Winona police found six licensed liquor establishments failed to card a minor who was posing as an undercover agent. Ten establishments did card. In non-compliance with the state law limiting bar service to patrons 21 and older were:
> Broken World Records, 265 East Third Street.
> Fast Eddie’s, 500 West Fifth Street.
> Mulligans Pub, 219 East Third Street.
> Poots Tavern, 579 East 7th Street.
> Red Men Club, 176 West Third Street.
> Sloppy Joes, 526 East 3rd Street.
The goal of compliance checks, said Deputy Police Jeff Jay Rasmussen, was partly to develop data on how to respond to establishments that serve minors. Establishments that passed were issued certificates of compliance. They were:
> The BrickYard, 579 East Third Street.
> Cornerstone Bar, 501West Fourth Street.
> E Bs Corner, 700 West Fifth Street.
> Hei N Low Tap, 529 East Seventh Street.
> Island City Brewing, 65 East Front Street.
> Luckys On Third,107 West 3rd Street.
> Mankato Bar, 477 Mankato Avenue.
> Market Street Tap, 117 Market Street.
> 929 Beer House & Grill, 929 East Eighth Street.
> No Name Bar, 252 E Third Street.
> Port 507, 128 West Second Street.
One bar, Handy Corner, at 700 East Fifth Street, was closed. A compliance check was cancelled at Gabbys Bar & Lounge, at 179 East Third Street, because the bartender knew the undercover minor.
Multi-agencies
Participating in the compliance checks were Winona police, Winona County deputies, and the Winona County Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention. The purpose, said Rasmussen, was to “get it out there that we’re checking and we are striving for compliance because it does make our community safer.”
Data update
The final numbers listed here are re corrected slightly from what was originally reported.
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