Jury: Big-time GOP donor Lazzaro guilty in sex case
MINNEAPOLIS – A federal jury returned a verdict of guilty against Republican operative and major donor Anton Lazzaro for sex trafficking. Guilty on all counts, the jury said. The charges involved five girls ages 15 and 16. Jurors went into deliberations Friday afternoon and returned the verdict three hours later. The mandatory minimum sentence will be 10 years. Lazzaro, 32, testified in his own defense. He acknowledged the sex but insisted that he neither recruited nor paid the girls. Prosecutors alleged that Lazzaro met his co-defendant, Gisela Castro Medina, on a website tat lines up wealthy men with younger partners, and that he paid her to find other sex partners. Lazzaro maintained the website was no different than other dating sites. He denied that he had an agreement with Castro Medina, then 18, to recruit girls for him. Prosecutor Melinda Williams called Lazzaro a “predator.” Lazzaro’s attorney, Daniel Gerdts, responded that trafficking victims typically don’t benefit financially. He also noted that Lazzaro gave cash and gifts to people with whom he never had sex.
Earlier: Lazzaro friends go to bat for him online
Earlier: Lazzaro: Am victim of political revenge, jealousy
Lazzaro. The jury of six men and six women deliberated three hours.
Delta drops its lone LSE flight
LACROSSE, Wis. – Delta Airlines is furloughing its LaCrosse service on June 4. The main reason: Not enough pilots. Systemwide Delta is dropping 100 flights to “minimize disruptions and bounce back faster when challenges occur.” These are mostly flights served by the corporately separate Delta Connection regional service. At one time Delta and its predecessor Northwest Airlines had almost hourly flights between LaCrosse and its Minneapolis hub at peak times of day, as well as a roundtrip flight to Detroit. Currently there is one plane in and out of LaCrosse daily: Flight 5393 arriving at 3:20 p.m. and departing at 4:05 p.m.
Verbatim
Allison Ausband, chief customer experience officer: “More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation – weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased CoVid case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups — are resulting in an operation that isn’t consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years.”
Rail safety training mandated in Senate bill
ST. PAUL, Minn. – A railroad safety bill on the Minnesota Senate agenda took on urgency following the ethanol train wreck between Willmar and Granite falls. The bill offered by Rob Kupec, a Moorhead Democrat, specifies training protocols for rail workers and emergency response teams. Coincidentally the bill already was on the Senate Transportation Committee agenda the day after the evacuation at the fiery Burlington Northern derailment at Raymond. The bill passed the Transportation Committee and goes next to the Judiciary Committee.
Verbatim
Kupec: “Rail transportation and pipelines play an important role in our economy. We need to ensure that the Minnesota communities that they pass through have the proper knowledge and tools to protect life and property,”
Kupec. First-term senator.
Driver hurt when strikes tree near Minneiska
MINNEISKA., Minn. – A St. Paul woman was injured when she lost control of her car on wet pavement, went into the ditch, and struck a tree. Beatrice Clotsine Buckhanan, 65, was taken 14 miles to the Winona hospital with non-life threatening injuries, deputies said. The accident was about 11:30 a.m. Buckhanan was northbound on U.S. Highway 61 about six miles south of Minneiska. She was driving a 2003 Pontiac Grand Prix.
Any new tricks to corral bad carp? Still looking
WINONA, Minn. — Grace Loppnow wishes there were a magic bullet to rid the Mississippi River of the invasive carp that now have reached Winona. Loppnow is the state’s chief in the battle against silver carp. But even 50 years after the first ones escaped into the river in Arkansas, fishery experts have few tools. Any new tools? “We will continue to use a combination of proven methods and the best available information to minimize risk by targeting and removing as many fish as possible,” said Loopnow. These methods include counting cap to establish where they’re at and then netting them. Department of Natural Resources experts also try herd carp with irritating audio and noisy boats and netting them. The process, tried extensively near laCrosse last year, has had limited success. The largest carp advance upriver, latest outbreak has been in Pool 6 upstream from LaCrosse and behind the Trempealeau dam to Winona. Tagging and tracking carp helps biologists better understand the carp population to target areas for removal and also to determine whether reproduction is occurring, Loopnow said. She called on anglers take photograph carp and inform the nearest Natural Resources fisheries office. The DNR she said, would be pleased to pick up fish.
Loppnow. Invasive fish coordinator, Minnesota Natural Resources Department.
30 days jail for fatal 2021 Amish buggy crash
PRESTON, Minn. –A Hastings man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for driving with drugs and two children aboard and hitting a horse-drawn Amish buggy and killing the teen-age buggy driver. Also, Joseph Anthony Perry, 41, was placed on probation for two years. Judge Jeremy Clinefelter issued the sentence. The terms were in a plea deal in which Perry admitted to a misdemeanors of drug possession and driving after his license had been suspended. Dismissed were a felony drug charge and misdemeanor counts of driving with an open bottle, careless driving, and possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. The accident was in a rural road in June 2021. Perry told a deputy that the sun was in his eyes and that he asked one of his sons to grab him his sunglasses but the boy couldn’t find them. By then it was too late. The buggy driver, 15-year-old Henry Hershberger, was injured fatally. Deputies said Perry was driving 50 mph and did not brake.
Earlier: Boy in Amish buggy dies in collision
Perry. Was driving home o to Hastings from a resort in Spring Grove.
Verdict guilty in quadruple slaying
ST. PAUL, Minn. – After a two-week trial a jury convicted a man who murdered four people in St. Paul and then drove the bodies to Wisconsin and left them in a stolen vehicle in a cornfield. Antoine Suggs, 39, remains jailed on $10 million bail until a sentencing hearing. The conviction was for shooting the four people after a night at the White Squirrel tavern in St. Paul in September 2021. Suggs’ father, Darren Lee Osborne, 58, already is in prison for helping Suggs transport the bodies to Wisconsin.
Earlier: Balloons released at sunset at vigil
Suggs. Surrendered in Arizona two weeks after slaying.
House OKs quick local disaster relief
ST.PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota House voted 126-0 to replenish the state’s depleted disaster contingency fund with $40 million. The bill next goes to the Senate. Representative Gene Pelowski, a Winona Democrat, who sponsored the bill, said the bill will expedite aid to communities to repair roads and public utilities and buildings. Hitherto communities had to wait for the Legislature to approve emergency aid, which was problematic because the Legislature goes months between sessions.
Verbatim
Pelowski: “When disasters strike outside of the regular legislative session, this account is a crucial tool for ensuring impacted communities receive support in a timely manner. Since many towns in Minnesota are unable to address the damage of a devastating flood, fire or storm on their own, adequately replenishing this account before the regular session ends is imperative.”
Tor, USB no sanctuary for child porn fans
ROCHESTER, Minn. – A Rochester man using a hard-to-track Tor browser was charged with having a collection of pornographic images of children on a USB storage device. Charged was Kevin James Hammell, 58. Police said they were tipped by Photoshop manufacturer Adobe that Hammell subscribed to a child-porn site. When confronted, Hammell first claimed he happened to stumble across the images, police said. His USB had stored 20 images suspect images of girls 8 fo 10, according to the criminal complaint.
Fire destroys Stoddard storage barn
STODDARD, Wis. – A barn loaded with old automobiles, machinery, antiques and family heirlooms was destroyed by a pre-dawn fire. There were no injuries. Fire Chief Brian Lehmann said the building was almost gone when his crews arrived about 4:30 a.m. just off Forrest Lane south of town Two nearby outbuildings were saved.
GOP chair on Trump woes: Waste of time
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – The state Republican Party chair, David Hann, picked up the Trump claim of witch hunt” after the former president was indicted in New York for criminal conduct. “It is disconcerting to see our justice system used to pursue partisan end,” Hann zaid. “A Democrat district attorney is busy tying up time and resources to go after a political opponent instead of cracking down on lawlessness in New York, which just saw another year of record-breaking crime.” With Trump’s indictment, involving hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump became the first president in history to be indicted. He is expected to fly to New York from his Florida home Tuesday to be finger-printed, to pose for a mug shot, and perhaps to plead.
Other reactions to the Trump indictment:
Hann. Republican state chair since 2021. State senator 2003-2017.
> Angie Craig, a Democrat elected to Congress from Hastings: “Today serves as a solemn reminder that we can never allow politics to dictate the rule of law. Every American plays a critical role in the preservation of our democracy and the safety of our communities, and I strongly urge anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in response to this announcement to do so peacefully. I am hopeful that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will allow the judicial process to run its course free from political interference.”
> Kim Reynolds, Republican governor of Iowa and a long-time Trump apologist: “This serves as a reminder to Americans that there is a two-tiered justice system under Joe Biden. While New York faces an open season for crime, the Manhattan DA is focused on arresting a former president. This is what an assault on democracy looks like – using government power to go after your political opponents – and it’s coming directly from those who proclaim to ‘defend’ it.”
Lingering flare-up at rail wreck called benign
Up-ended tank cars. Dwarfing hard-helmeted disaster clean-up workers.
Fire-retarding foam: “Safe and state of art”
RAYMOND, Minn. – Agents of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency began monitoring air and water at the derailed Burlington Northern freight train wreck outside Raymond. The ground was still relatively frozen, which meant the that pockets of ethanol still in the punctured cars was burning off before penetrating the soil, the agency said. Firefighters were using foam to extinuguish occasional flare-ups. The foam, agents said, didn’t contain carcinogenic PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals” in original fire-retardant products from the 1950s. Governor Tim Walz noted flare-ups were to be expected as bulldozers and cranes moved and lifted cars to clear the right-of-way. The flare-ups were from pockets of ethanol trapped in the wreckage, About the flare-ups Walz said: “That doesn’t mean they’re going to explode. It’s not a bad thing. That’s just what’s going to happen. And then they will foam these things down.”
WSU dean search falters further
WINONA, Minn. – The second of three finalists to be liberal arts dean at Winona State University withdrew her candidacy less than a week before scheduled campus interviews. Jennifer Deane is chair of social sciences at the University of Minnesota-Morris. Her departure, and that of Marshall Thompson of Northeastern University in Chicago, reduces the field to one: James Scott, director of a political science program at Texas Christian. The question now is yes or no on Scott. Would he be a be good fit and does he see it the same.
Earlier: WSU search for liberal arts dean narrows
Youth dies after being buried in sand hole
KELLOGG, Minn. – A rural teenager who was found buried in a sand hole has died in a Rochester hospital. Hunter Wayne Flaxbeard, 14, had remained alive for two days after being dug out of the sand near the family home two miles south of Kellogg. There was a 911 call that he was stuck in the sand hole and covered with sand. He was an eighth-grader at St. John’s Lutheran School in Lake City.
College scores
Softball: Saint Mary’s and Viterbo, postponed
Softball: Saint Mary’s and Viterbo, doubleheader, postponed
Volunteer teacher dies at Rochester school
ROCHESTER Minn. – A retired school teacher, Mary Ellen Trueman, died doing what she loved. Since retiring, she had volunteered at Washington Elementary School. This afternoon Trueman, 82, had a medical emergency and died at the school office. She famous among co-workers for her cheerful joke of the day.
Biden due Monday in Minnesota
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will be in Minneapolis on Monday as part of a three-week barnstorm in20 states. He calls it his Investing in America Tour. The focus: His American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act. In the announcing the Minnesota stop, the White House said that $2 billion of new investment has gone to Minnesota.
Raymond evacuees told: Safe to go home
RAYMOND, Minn. – Residents of tiny Raymond, population 480, were allowed back home after being evacuated because of a burning train wreck during the night. People living nearest the accident went eight miles to Prinsburg for shelter at a church and school. Ten hours later, about 11 a.m., they got the OK to return home. Railroad disaster managers said there were no air or water contamination. There were no injuries. First-responders from 15 agencies responded to the wreck
Mississippi bridges among 1,120 on checklist
WINONA, Minn. – State highway inspectors begin their annual spring bridge inspections Monday. These include the Highway 43 interstate bridge at Winona and the Highway 60 interstate bridge at Wabasha. In all, 1,120 bridges in southeast Minnesota are being checked for the effects of traffic, weather and other elements over the winter.
Railroad: No idea when tracks can reopen
RAYMOND, Minn. – The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad moved crews and heavy equipment to lift derailed cars from its mainline through Raymond after a fiery derailment. Matt Garland, vice president of BNSF operations, said he couldn’t estimate when the roadbed would be ready again for trains. The process is complicated and involves multiple agencies, he said. The Minnesota Department of Transportation, meanwhile. closed Highway 23, the primary Willmar-Granite Falls automobile and truck route, which runs parallel to the rail line.
Notable journalism
Scotty Andrew (CNN, March 28, 2023): “Wisconsin School District Bans Miley Cyrus- Dolly Pardon Duet with ‘Rainbow’ in Title”
Chris Rogers (Winona Post, March 22, 2023): “MSC-Southeast President Reprimanded Over Violations”
Harrison Tremarelli (Winona Daily News, March 26, 2023): “Wilson Manure Digester in Environmental Review Outside Winona Is PARt of Broader Dairy Industry Net Zero Initiative”
Walz scopes scopes ethanol train wreck
Governor at Raymond. In a jacket loaned him by a Homeland Security investigator, Walz gets an up-close look at mangled tanker cars from a Burlington Northern train derailment.
Governor: Less fireball if tankers triple-hulled
RAYMOND, Minn. – Governor Tim Walz knows something about railroad safety. When he was in Congress, he was on the House Transportation Committee and pushed for requiring the rail industry to update their fleets to crash-resistant triple-hull tanker cars. Whether the cars that blew up in a derailment near Raymond were triple-hull, Walz couldn’t tell from a distance as he surveyed the tangled of wreckage near Raymond. Less than seven hours earlier a Burlington Northern freight had gone off the rails. Tankers carrying ethanol blew up, forcing the evacuation of the area. In St. Paul Walz had been awakened by a state trooper at 2:30 a.m. about the accident. He made the two-hour trip from St. Paul by 9 a.m. to survey the damage. About new-style encapsulated tanker cars, Walz noted the railroads were supposed to phase them in. “There was a timeline to do this,” Walz said. “It’s my guess that that’s probably why this contained a little bit more.” As the governor looked on, the punctured cars were still leaking ethanol with occasional mini-bursts of flame. “With triple hulls, he said, you don’t have a massive fireball.”
Earlier: Ethanol explodes in train wreck; evacuation follows
When informed of the Raymond wreck, Walz said his first reaction was whether anybody was injured. Thr answer was no. After that, he said he asked about evacuation efforts and what needed to be done. Then, he said, his thoughts turned to the devastating train derailment on February 3 in East Palestine in Ohio. “Certainly all of us, since the situation in Ohio, are very concerned. ‘What are we breathing? What’s in the air?” Walz said the Dallas-based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad was quickly forthcoming about what the train was hauling and about the threat to nearby residents. Walz said that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also was on the phone right away. National Transportation Safety Board investigators were immediately en route. So too were Federal Railroad Administration investigators.
Don’t pack away your snow shovels yet
Worse north. Heaviest snow with the orange bands. Not much expected in gray bands. Images: National Weather Service.
Winona smack dab in middle for early spring storm
WINONA, Minn. – Rain on Friday can be expected to turn to wet, heavy snow overnight, The National Weather Service sees a 54% chance of four inches on the ground in Winona and a 21% of eight inches.
Charge: Home lab turning bark into hallucinogen
NERSTRAND, Minn. – In a perverse way, it might be said that Victor Wang is a back-to-nature kind of guy. According to evidence in a criminal complaint, Wang harvested bark and boiled it in slow-cookers into a thick reddish stew. But here’s the rub: The stuff was dimethyltryptamine, known among druggies as DMT – an LSD-like hallucinogenic. Wang, 36, was arrested on multiple controlled substance counts related felonies. He also was charged with having firearms in violation of a probation restrictions as a convicted felon. The arrest came as Wang was walking out of his house. He had 28 grams of meth in a pocket, gents said. Found in Wang’s basement and elsewhere in the house were:
> Tree bark and roots in trash bins.
> “Precursor chemicals” with rags used as filters.
> Two slow cookers in the basement with 100 grams of DMT sludge.
> 100 gams of substances in advanced stages of DMT production.
> Two grams of psilocybin mushrooms, also called magic mushrooms.
> A small amount of marijuana.
> A glass pipette.
> Packaging materials and scales.
> Two shotguns and a rifle.
Wang. Claimed he was using the red sludge to tie-dye T-shirts.
Basement lab
In Nerstrand, population 290, in Rice County12 miles northwest of Faribault. Drug production would have been outside strict safety protocols in the regulated pharmaceutical industry.
The raid
Led by the Cannon River Drug and Violent Offender Task Force.
Verbatim
Scott O’Brien, task force commander: “Coming across a DMT lab is extremely rare. These labs create major risks to public safety.”
Cops: Suicide ended life of man in police stand-off
CANNON FALLS, Minn. – The man who died in a police stand-off shot himself in the head, police said. He was identified as Dean Anderson, 25, of Cannon Falls. His body was found inside the house where he had holed up after a woman was shot and wounded at the place. Anderson was known to be hostile to law enforcement. He had firearms in the house, police said. During the stand-off, officers learned that Anderson had made prior statements that he would not go to jail. Police declined to release the name of the woman who was shot but said she had been treated and released from a Rochester hospital. She was a victim of domestic abuse, police said.
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