A 17-year-old Minnesota boy has been taken into custody and charged with planning to kill his family and then go to his school and detonate a series of bombs.
The teen suspect, whose name is being withheld by officials, faces charges in juvenile court including four counts of attempted first-degree murder, six counts of possessing explosive or incendiary devices, and two counts of criminal damage to property.
Police were tipped off when a resident noticed something suspicious happening at a self-storage facility.
“This case is a classic example of citizens doing the right thing in calling the police when things seem out of place. By doing the right thing, (an) unimaginable tragedy has been prevented,” Capt. Kris Markeson of the Waseca police said at a press conference.
The teen admitted to police that he planned to kill his mother, father and sister before setting a fire in the rural part of the county to distract emergency responders. The he planned to set fires at the junior and senior high schools before throwing bombs and shooting as many students as possible.
The boy reportedly idolized the shooters of the 1999 Columbine massacre.
In Minnesota, if you want to coach someone through killing themselves, you’re now legally and Constitutionally protected to do it.
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday reverses the convictions of a former nurse who had been convicted under the state’s law that bans assisting suicide. He had been convicted of encouraging and providing advice to a 32-year-old man and 18-year-old woman.
The sentence for William Melchert-Dinkel had been suspended pending his appeal. His lawyers had argued that he had free speech rights to share methods and encouragement to those planning suicides and that it was impossible to prove his words were the deciding factor in the victims ending their lives.
The prosecution noted that Melchert-Dinkel sought out depressed people online for the sake of encouraging them into suicide. He posed as a female nurse and then after showing compassion gave instructions on the best way to kill themselves.
Melchert-Dinkel admitted that he did it for the “thrill” and entered into fake suicide pacts with at least 5 people with whom he is sure ended their own lives with his encouragement.
A grown man who wanted a youngster’s iPad punched an 8-year-old Minneapolis boy in the face.
The boy was following his aunt from a daycare building to the aunt’s car. Aaron Stillday, 32, ran up to the child, punched him in the face, grabbed the iPad and ran up the street.
Stillday, who has been arrested 60 times, made the mistake of attacking the boy in front of Mohammad Armeli.
Armeli had been working at a nearby restaurant when he saw Stillday attack the child. Armeli immediately began to chase the thief and followed him for a half a mile.
When Stillday was caught, he responded by smashing the iPad on the sidewalk before he could be subdued.
“This is the scum of the earth,” Armeli said of Stillday. “You cannot hit a child like that. Don’t hit him for his iPad, or for anything.”
The good news from the incident: the Apple Store in Minneapolis, when they were informed of what happened to the boy, gave him a brand new iPad.
The extreme cold weather of the polar vortex has claimed a young victim.
A 6-year-old Bemidji, Minnesota girl is dead after being exposed to the frigid temperatures of that northern community.
The girl was found lying in front of an apartment building, fully dressed in gloves, a coat and hat, but it wasn’t enough for her to be able to survive in the elements. The temperature was 20 below zero with a wind chill passing 40 below.
Emergency personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s office is performing an autopsy.
Neighbors say the girl lived in the apartments with her mother and 3-year-old sibling. Police say the girl’s mother was not there the night before the girl’s body was found and they do not know why the girl was outside.
While no arrests have been made, police say that could change pending the outcome of the autopsy.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association has sent a threatening letter to a school in Minnesota that was working with a local church to feed starving children in Haiti.
The AHA claims parents of a student at the School of Engineering and Arts were angry that their children were taken to a local church where they packed boxes of food for starving children in Haiti. The food would be distributed through a Christian organization that focuses on feeding the hungry.
The packing of the boxes happened at a local Lutheran church and the AHA claims that just being there violates the student’s First Amendment rights. The group also objected to the fact the packages were called “manna” packages.
The school defended the action by saying the first through third graders participated in a valuable community service learning activity with hundreds of community residents.
“The students learn there are people the world who are not as fortunate as them,” Latisha Gray told Fox News. “They believe they are being a part of the solution.”
It’s been over 20 years since the biggest of the Great Lakes completely froze. Now, experts watching Lake Superior say it’s likely that the current cold freeze will bring a total freezing of the lake after closing in on a 20-year record.
The ice cover on the lake reached 91 percent coverage on February 5, 1994, the record during the last 20 years. Jay Austin of the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota, says it won’t be long until that record falls.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says the average depth of ice on the lake is 10 inches. On February 10th, all the Great Lakes were 80.4 percent covered in ice compared to 38.4 percent last year.
Austin says that the extraordinary cold winter, that included Duluth breaking an all-time record with 23 straight days below zero, will have a strong influence on the region’s weather this year.
“Typically, the lake will start warming up in late June,” Austin told CNS News. “It will be August before we see that this year.”
Austin said the “air conditioning (lake) effect” would be stronger than usual, keeping temperatures down well into the summer.
Fourth-graders on a fossil hunt to mark the end of school ended up experiencing a horrific tragedy when one of their classmates was buried in a landslide. Continue reading →
Four Minnesota men have been sentenced to prison for their role in supporting the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia.
Abdifatah Isse, Salah Ahmed and Ahmed Mahamud were sentenced to three years in prison for providing material support to terrorists. Omer Mohamed received a 12-year sentence for conspiracy to provide material support. Continue reading →
A 24-year-old Minnesota man was arrested by federal agents after he was found to be planning a terrorist attack.
Buford Rogers was arrested on Friday on a charge of being a convict in possession of a firearm. Continue reading →
