Tag: Minnesota
Father charged after leaving son in hot SUV for nearly six hours
A 4-year-old Minnesota boy died after his father left him inside a hot SUV for nearly six hours while he worked, authorities said.
Kristopher Alexander Taylor, 26, of Apple Valley, was charged Monday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of his son, who was found “stiff” to the touch when Taylor returned to his SUV on Saturday after working at the Minnesota Monthly 8th Annual Grillfest at CHS Field in St. Paul, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Star Tribune.
Taylor parked the vehicle in a spot “entirely exposed” to sunlight and told police he cracked just one of its windows roughly one-quarter to one-half inch for the boy. Taylor said he gave his son a handheld video game to pass the time and last checked on him at about 11:30 a.m. Saturday before returning nearly six hours later at 5:15 p.m., the complaint reads.
The boy — identified by a family friend as Riley Taylor — was left in Taylor’s care at about 2:30 a.m. Friday while his mother went to work. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital after Taylor returned to the SUV and found him unresponsive, the Star Tribune reports.
Temperatures during the nearly six-hour span ranged from 64 to 70 degrees, with partly cloudy to mostly cloudy skies, according to National Weather Service data. But reps from a national nonprofit advocacy group told the newspaper that children have died from heatstroke inside cars while temperatures dipped below 60 degrees outside.
“A vehicle acts like a greenhouse, heating up to deadly temperatures within minutes, even on a mild day,” KidsandCars.org told the Star Tribune in a statement. “Contrary to popular belief, cracking the windows does nothing to decrease the maximum temperature reached inside a vehicle. Additionally, a child’s body temperature rises 3 to 5 times faster than an adult’s.”
A preliminary ruling from the medical examiner reported that Riley died of hyperthermia. A total of 52 children died inside cars due to excessive heat last year, making 2018 the deadliest year on record for such deaths. On average, 38 children die in hot cars annually — or one every nine days, according to the group, which has tracked data for more than 20 years.
Taylor, who was arrested at the hospital, told police he couldn’t find anyone to watch his son while he worked and didn’t think it was too hot to leave his son behind, citing prior instances, KSTP reports.
“Taylor said he had done it once in the past about a year ago and nothing bad happened to the boy on that occasion, but he admitted he had left the window entirely down that time,” the complaint reads.
Jan Null, a meteorologist at San Jose State University, said Riley is the fifth person nationwide to die inside a hot car this year. The interior of a vehicle in direct sunlight could exceed temperatures of 130 degrees if the outside temp is roughly 71 degrees, Null told the station.
Taylor, who has been released from custody after posting $25,000 bail, is scheduled to return to court on Friday.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/07/father-charged-after-leaving-son-in-hot-suv-for-nearly-six-hours/
Photo Credit: Facebook; St. Paul Police Department
Minnesota State Fair announces $14 million expansion
Because the best way to deal with regular record-breaking numbers (and the increased congestion and longer lines that come with them)?
Get even bigger. Like, $14 million bigger. Which the folks behind the fair have announced they plan to do.
MPR reports that they’ll break ground on the expansion next month, in the northwest corner of the grounds. New attractions will include a performing arts space—which could mean even more than the 900 performances the fair hosted this year. (Deputy general manager Renee Alexander tells MPR that they’ve doubled the free entertainment budget over the last 12 years.)
The revamp will also introduce a traveling exhibit hall, which will be almost as big as the Dairy Building. And it should all be ready in time for next year’s fair, which kicks off August 22.
“You know, even on our biggest days, there’s plenty of room for people,” general manager Jerry Hammer—whose name sounds like it could be a State Fair show-of-strength game—tells MPR.
It’s why they’ve spent the last decade carefully making the grounds over: updating old buildings, re-imagining existing layouts, and adding new food and events spaces like the Hangar, which just debuted this year. Crucially, they’ve also added more bathrooms.
Hammer adds: “The fair was more crowded 30 years ago, 35 years ago.”
Painful to imagine—especially if you waited in this year’s record-setting lines for some of the new foods like we did.
Article via: Minnesota State Fair announces $14 million expansion
Woman killed Thanksgiving guest for smoking crack at dinner table and not offering her any
A Thanksgiving dinner ended in horror when a Minneapolis woman allegedly killed her dinner guest for doing drugs at the table — and not offering her any.
Anenia Marie Hare, 47, told police that she invited 69-year-old Edward Caliph over to her apartment on Thursday to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal.
Hare said before “they started to eat, she looked over and saw the victim lighting up a crack pipe,” the Star Tribune reports.
She allegedly told authorities she became angry because Caliph did not ask her permission to do drugs in her apartment and never asked her to participate.
Hare said she grabbed an antenna and butcher knife, stood in front of the apartment door and told Caliph he wasn’t allowed to leave. She told detectives she was only trying to appear intimidating.
Caliph started yelling for a neighbor to call 911, and allegedly broke a window in the living room with a vacuum cleaner trying to escape.
Hare allegedly grabbed her guest by the shoulders and fell on top of him as he fought to get the knife from her. “I just grabbed him by the front and he went down,” she told police. “To me it just felt like I put him in a deeper hold or something.”
Hare said after the struggle, Caliph fell face down on the ground and “he started snoring.”
Hare claimed she called 911 four times about the incident.
Police said the man was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy showed he died of homicidal violence.
Hare was charged with second-degree murder and is being held on $500,000 bail at the Hennepin County Jail.
Man kept bodies of mom, brother in home for a year. He couldn’t bring himself to bury them, so he kept them in the house.
Robert Kuefler of White Bear Lake, Minn., tried to discourage visitors, according to prosecutors.
It was likely because he kept the decaying bodies of his mother and twin brother inside his house for about a year, they said.
This week Kuefler was charged with interference with a dead body or scene of death because he neglected to tell authorities that his family members died of natural causes, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.
The Pioneer-Press gave Kuefler’s age as 60, while the Minneapolis Star-Tribune listed it as 59.
Before the bodies were found in September 2016, prosecutors said, Kuefler took several steps to prevent relatives and others from stopping by or making inquiries, the newspaper reported:
- He sent out a Christmas card saying his mother and brother were still alive but were having health problems.
- He wrote that his mother didn’t want people to visit the home.
- He told people that neither his mother nor his brother could hear the phone ring.
Police say Kuefler told them his mother, Evelyn Kuefler, died in August 2015 and his brother, Richard Kuefler, died in July 2015.
But he couldn’t bring himself to bury them, so he kept them in the house.
At one point, he moved his brother’s body into the bathroom because it was “in the way,” the Pioneer-Press reported.
The complaint says his mother’s body was decayed and skeletal and his brother’s body was “mummified.”
Kuefler was previously arrested last year on suspicion of exploitation of a vulnerable adult, but apparently there wasn’t enough evidence to support the charge, the Star-
Tribune reported.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/10/07/man-kept-bodies-of-mom-brother-in-home-for-a-year-prosecutors/
Minnesota Girl Kidnapped, Swims Across Lake to Escape After 29 Days of Abuse
She is “an unbelievable young woman.” That’s what a police chief had to say after a 15-year-old girl escaped from captors who allegedly assaulted her over the course of a month.
The teen reportedly left her home in Alexandria, Minn., on Aug. 8 with a family acquaintance who said he needed her help, reports the Echo Press.
When she arrived at Thomas Barker’s home in Carlos, however, she encountered a “nightmare,” says Alexandria Police Chief Rick Wyffels. Barker, 32—soon joined by his roommate and later a friend—restrained the teen with zip ties.
At no point over the next 28 days was she left alone as she was physically and sexually assaulted and moved to a cornfield and then a home on a lake in Grant County, Wyffels says.
But on the 29th day, the 15-year-old saw an opportunity to escape. When her captors left to get lunch on Tuesday, she escaped and “bravely ran door to door” without finding help, Wyffels says.
Finally, she swam across the 150-acre lake to a property and encountered its owner, who’d just returned from work because he’d forgotten something. “It was like somebody shined a big beam of light on me,” the man tells WCCO.
“I was in the right place at the right time.” Just as police arrived, the teen—later treated for minor injuries, per NBC News—spotted a car belonging to one of her captors whom police quickly apprehended, the property owner adds.
All three alleged captors are now in custody. Barker; Joshua Holby, 31; and Steven Powers, 20, are each held on probable cause for false imprisonment, kidnapping, and assault.
Wyffels says authorities are still trying to determine a motive.