The man suspected of targeting the University of Minnesota with deadly threats to students has been located and contained, the school said early Thursday afternoon.
An all clear was sent out in a campuswide alert, which noted that the Sheriff’s Office in Chippewa County, where the man lives, in Watson, “has located the suspect and [has] him contained. TC campus can resume normal operations.”
The man’s threats turned out to be fake and he did not travel to the Twin Cities campus, according to University spokesman Jake Ricker. The campus resumed its normal operations Thursday afternoon.
The notice did not explain what led to the man being found or elaborate on his containment.
Ricker told the Star Tribune, “My understanding is Chippewa County sheriff’s [deputies] have this individual surrounded in his home.”
As the apparent standoff continued into the afternoon, the man went back on the same Facebook page where the threats were posted and wrote, “I know your [sic] not leaving…. hope you don’t just get the presidents secret service here.”
He posted a picture of an armored SWAT vehicle outside his window just before 1 p.m.
The string of safety alerts began about 7:20 a.m., with the university saying its police were joining with other agencies to have additional officers on campus in the wake of the social media threats.
A second alert soon afterward said that all campus operations would proceed normally, but employees were encouraged to work remotely. Students initially did not receive the same direction to avoid campus. Shortly after 10 a.m., an alert included that students also should not come to campus.
A final alert around 1 p.m. confirmed that police found the man inside his home in Watson, about 135 miles west of the Twin Cities, and were working to arrest him.
Chippewa County Sheriff Derek Olson said the man, who is a former mayor of a small town in his county and still lives there, made a flurry of threatening posts on Facebook that started Wednesday. The Sheriff’s Office then notified the university of the postings.
Olson added he had deputies “staged at the [man’s] residence” should he show up there. The sheriff said relatives of the man were at the home as well.
“Public Safety has received a specific threat to shoot persons on the TC campus …” the initial university safety notice read.
The alert identified the suspected sender by name and described him as 41 years old, 6 feet tall, 195 pounds and having brown hair and hazel eyes. The alert did not disclose his ethnicity. Olson also identified the man by name and added that he is white.
The Star Tribune is not reporting his name, because he has yet to be charged in connection with this allegation.
“I’m not aware of any specific individual or location involved with these threats, beyond the general threat of gun violence at the Twin Cities campus,” Ricker said. “I’m also not immediately aware of any connections [the suspect] has to the university. That’s not to say there is none, but at this time I’m not aware of any.”
The notice did not offer any specifics about the threat or how it was communicated, but Olson told the Star Tribune that the suspect went on an hours-long threat-filled rant on his landscape company’s Facebook page. Some of the postings included a specific family as an intended target.
“Here we go AMERICA,” the last of his many postings read. “I am heading out … to the U of M Minneapolis mn to start killing kids. … if I can’t get the USA military to [come] talk to me face to face then I’m going for it to try defend your freedom America. … I may have been played … on this brain reading technology but today I find out for sure.”
The posting then warned, “IM COMING FOR YA KIDS AND ITS GOING TO GET BLOODY.”
A previous posting from the man also made a threat against Iranian students, saying, “If this government don’t have the total lock down of ALL university’s of Minnesota by this morning sun up watch out PARENTS … Kids will die for real amongst them u of m students.”
Other postings from the man made explicit threats to Sheriff Olson, and Chippewa County judges Thomas Van Hon and Keith Helgeson. In 2016, Van Hon ordered the man civilly committed for six months as mentally ill and chemically dependent.
Court records show that the man has a criminal history in Minnesota that includes convictions for burglary, theft, drunken driving and illicit drug possession.
In 2021, the man was convicted of burglary for driving a tractor through the narthex of a Lutheran church in his home town, where he was elected mayor in 2012. A police officer went inside and found the man on the altar wrapped in a blanket, the criminal complaint read.
A judge gave him 15 months in prison, but set aside the sentence, order him jailed for 30 days and put him on probation for five years.
In 2016, the man was sentenced to nine months in jail after pleading guilty to burglarizing the home of a man who followed him as mayor. The deal also dismissed charges from when he allegedly fired a rifle through the sunroof of his truck while he was “trying to get away from the corpses that were after him,” according to court documents.
The U.S. Department of Education wrote in a report released in September that “active shooter incidents represent a small subset of the possible gun violence or serious violent incidents that occur at schools,”
The department recorded 18 such incidents at colleges between 2000 and 2021, though researchers noted that many schools moved online in 2020 while responding to the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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