Lost Lake Tribune Sep. 13, 2014

FUGITIVE CAUGHT AFTER LONG ORDEAL

Editor’s Note: Although the participants in this story are choosing lifestyles of which the Bible does not approve, this is a big story in Minnesota and shows the consequences of such lifestyles. BF

A monthlong manhunt that had police scrambling from Arden Hills to Shakopee ended peacefully Thursday when authorities arrested murder suspect Lyle “Ty” Hoffman after he was spotted perusing the drive-through menu of a fast-food restaurant in Shakopee.

Police caught up with Hoffman, who has been charged in the Aug. 11 killing of former partner and business associate Kelly Phillips, shortly after 10:20 a.m. outside an Arby’s restaurant on the east side of the city. They were tipped off to his whereabouts by a woman who saw him acting suspiciously as he walked the area. Hoffman, who was disheveled and unshaven, was unarmed and cooperative as police approached.

“It’s a good day for us,” said Ramsey County Chief Deputy John Kirkwood, whose agency has been leading the investigation. “It’s a great relief.”

Hoffman, 44, allegedly shot Phillips three times — once in the head as Phillips begged for his life — in the parking lot of a gas station in Arden Hills after the two pulled up in the same vehicle and were seen and heard arguing. The shooter then drove over Phillips’ body as he fled.

In the weeks since the slaying, Hoffman has been charged with second-degree murder and is also suspected of robbing a bank in Blaine while on the run. Authorities said Thursday that additional charges could be filed against him in coming days.

What investigators still didn’t know as of Thursday afternoon is where Hoffman had been hiding for the past month or whether anyone had helped him evade capture.

At a news conference, Kirkwood said there is still work to do — and a murder weapon to be recovered. Police are looking for a Glock semiautomatic .45-caliber handgun, camouflage in color.

Kirkwood said that “anything is possible” when asked whether someone had helped Hoffman elude police, adding that if someone had done so, “We’re eventually going to find out.”

Despite the work ahead, law enforcement officials were upbeat at two news conferences — one in Shakopee shortly after the arrest and another in Ramsey County later in the day. After a month of chasing Hoffman from Arden Hills to Blaine to Prior Lake and finally, to Shakopee, police had their man.

Kirkwood said he is not surprised that Hoffman surrendered without a fight.

“People get tired of running, and people are relieved to get caught,” he said. “It’s almost like ‘Now I don’t have to look over my shoulder.’ ”

Disheveled and skinnier

Ben Christensen, who owns a jewelry store across the street from the Arby’s, said he saw Hoffman speaking calmly with an officer on a grassy boulevard near the drive-through moments before the arrest.

“It looked like a casual ‘What are you doing here?’ ” Christensen said. “She [the officer] didn’t have her gun drawn. … There wasn’t urgency.”

A “disheveled” Hoffman “looked very similar” to the photos that have been widely distributed by law enforcement, but skinnier and with a 5 o’clock shadow, Christensen added.

Chatter on the police scanner in the minutes leading to the arrest indicated that Hoffman, wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, sunglasses and a ball cap, was walking from one store to the next.

“He was first observed by the officer looking at the drive-through menu,” Shakopee Police Chief Jeff Tate said. “[Hoffman] was on foot.”

Soon after came a declaration from an officer over the scanner: “One in custody.”

It was a quiet conclusion to weeks of tension and suspense.

‘It just feels raw’

Phillips, 48, was an attorney and Boston Scientific vice president who was active politically, advocating for passage of Minnesota’s same-sex “marriage” law. He and Hoffman had been in a personal relationship for many years and, together, had opened Lush nightclub in Minneapolis several years ago — continuing their business relationship even after their personal one ended.

Over the past year, however, Hoffman and Phillips had been engaged in an increasingly tense personal and professional dispute. Hoffman had been fired from the club and evicted from a nearby home that Phillips owned.

Phillips, meanwhile, was to “marry” Nathon Bailey on Aug. 30. After he was killed, family and friends instead held a private memorial service for him on that day.

“No amount of justice will heal the broken heart that I will carry forever,” Bailey said Thursday afternoon as he addressed the media outside St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Minneapolis. “Today’s events won’t bring Kelly back to life, and that is all I think about every second of every day.”

Asked what he thought when he heard Hoffman was taken into custody, Bailey, wearing a gold band around the ring finger of his left hand, said, “I thought I would feel a sense of relief ... but it just stirs everything up again. It just feels raw.”

In Mason City, Iowa, Kelly Phillips’ father, Jim Phillips, said he was picking up prescriptions at a store when he heard that Hoffman had been found, ending a month that he called “a nightmare. We’ve kind of ridden a roller coaster,” Jim Phillips said. “We’re relieved that it happened, that they caught him.

“But,” he added, “we’ll never be able to replace our son.”

Staff Writers Pat Pheifer, Karen Zamora, John Reinan, and Nicole Norfleet contributed to this report.

See article at this LINK

STAR VIKINGS PLAYER IN TROUBLE OVER CHILD DISCIPLINE

The explosive legal case against Vikings star Adrian Peterson was laid out Saturday in Texas, making it clear that the running back will have to convince a jury that whipping his son was “reasonable discipline.”

Phil Grant, a Montgomery County (Texas) assistant district attorney, said that a grand jury had decided that Peterson’s treatment of his son was “not reasonable.’’

“Obviously, parents are entitled to discipline their children as they see fit, except for when that discipline exceeds what the community would say is reasonable,” Grant said. “[But] the mental state that’s reflected in the indictment is that he did so with criminal negligence, or recklessly.”

Grant, speaking at a short news conference, said Peterson might not face trial until next year. If convicted, the Vikings star could face up to two years in a Texas jail and a $10,000 fine. The single-page indictment, handed out at Grant’s briefing, charged Peterson with one count of injury to a child.

For its part, the NFL had little to say about the case.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league was reviewing Peterson’s case to check for violations of its personal conduct policy. The policy would seem to give the NFL wide latitude to act — it says that criminal activity “is clearly outside the scope of permissible conduct,” and that discipline also can be imposed for “conduct that imposes inherent danger to the safety and well being” of another individual.

The Peterson case comes at the end of a week in which the NFL, and embattled Commissioner Roger Goodell, were the targets of blistering criticism for their initial handling of the domestic-abuse case involving Baltimore star Ray Rice.

The league gave no indication how soon it could act on Peterson’s case.

The Vikings star was back in Minnesota on Saturday after taking a late-night round-trip charter to Houston, where he was booked and then released on $15,000 bond. He is not expected to attend Sunday’s Vikings home opener against New England.

Blow to star, team

Regardless of the eventual outcome of the criminal case, the charges are a major setback to Peterson and the Vikings.

Long the face of the team, Peterson’s photo is prominently displayed at the construction site for the Vikings’ new $1 billion stadium in downtown Minneapolis. And his case is a reminder that Vikings fans have endured too many off-field criminal charges and embarrassments by team members in recent years.

For some, including former Gov. Arne Carlson, a vocal critic of state financing for the Vikings stadium, Peterson’s arrest was more evidence that pro sports — and the money and culture it has created — are out of control.

“We have a society that dearly loves its football — almost at any cost — and therein lies a danger. We’re addicted,” he said. He said the “tipping point” would only come “when you and I as fans, and as supporters, point to ourselves and say we’re part of the problem.”

Peterson is set to make $11.75 million this year and will receive another $2.4 million as part of an overall $12 million signing bonus he got as part of a seven-year, $96 million contract — $36 million of it guaranteed — signed in 2011.

Surprise charge?

Grant, the Texas prosecutor, flatly denied widespread media reports Friday that a Texas grand jury last week initially had decided not to indict Peterson.

“It was not shopped around to multiple grand juries,” he said.

Peterson’s cooperation with police, and his lawyer’s statements saying that the running back was simply treating his child the same way Peterson himself was disciplined at a young age, seemed to suggest an emerging legal defense. Rusty Hardin, Peterson’s lawyer, didn’t dispute reports indicating that Peterson had whipped his son with a “switch,” a tree branch stripped of its leaves.

Michael McCann, the founding director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute, said Texas is generally more permissive than other states when it comes to spanking or striking children for disciplinary reasons. But he quickly added that the child’s age — Peterson’s son is 4 — and the severity of the boy’s welts pose problems for Peterson in Texas, too.

McCann also said that the episode that allegedly led to the whipping, a scuffle between two small children over a video game, also would be in play in court. Prosecutors, he said, are likely to argue that “a child could not have known at age 4” that fighting over a video game could lead to such a severe whipping. “This is a 4-year-old boy who got into an argument over a video game,” said McCann. “His age is a key factor.”

Challenge for defense

Photos of the boy’s injuries and a media account quoting from a police report that Peterson stuffed the boy’s mouth with leaves during the whipping also could hurt Peterson’s defense, McCann said. “[I’ve] never heard of anything like that,” he said.

Grant did not dispute or confirm those accounts Saturday. He said Texas officials would instead prosecute those who leaked documents to the media Friday.

Texas law enforcement officials said they had initially been alerted of the case by police in Minnesota, and that the child’s mother in Minnesota had brought him to a doctor after he returned from visiting Peterson in Texas.

Under state law, a doctor in Minnesota has 24 hours to make a verbal report if they suspect that a child has been neglected or abused. A written report then must be submitted in three days.

Future questioned

Peterson’s future as a Viking remained in doubt Saturday.

McCann said that Peterson might be unlikely to plead guilty to a lesser offense because doing so, while perhaps quickly putting the case behind him, then would subject him to NFL discipline.

Joe Friedberg, a criminal defense lawyer in Minneapolis, said it bodes well for Peterson that he was charged with reckless or negligent conduct rather than with intentional harm. Crimes committed with intent carry harsher penalties, he said.

Friedberg doubts that Peterson has played his last game in the NFL but questioned whether he could play again in Minnesota. “If he comes out and plays for the Vikings, you’re going to have people burning their jerseys outside the stadium,” Friedberg said.

New York lawyer Peter Ginsberg said that Peterson can come back. He represented former Vikings Kevin and Pat Williams when they fought their suspensions for taking an over-the-counter supplement found to contain a banned supplement. He also represented NFL quarterback Michael Vick in his bankruptcy proceedings after he went to prison for dogfighting. Vick returned to play again.

“I don’t believe his career is over,” Ginsberg said of Peterson. “People make mistakes, make amends and come back bigger, better, stronger.”

But Peterson’s legal troubles come at a particularly bad time, he said. Peterson is “clearly subject to being disciplined” because he has acknowledged the whipping. Currently the NFL is in ongoing turmoil about how it treats players who are charged criminally, with Goodell himself a target for critics who see him as too lenient.

“Goodell clearly is under attack,” Ginsberg said. “He has significant public relations problems.”

Star Tribune Staff writer Master Tesfatsion contributed to this report. LINK

Sports Scores

Twin Cities Flag Football

Sat. Sap. 13: Team Nielsen 7, Team Fugate 6 at Bassett Creek Park in Crystal, MN

Sat. Sep.   6:  Team Voges 8, Team N. Hickerson 6 at W.R.R.B.C.

Mon. Sep. 1:  Team Nielsen 12, Team J. Hickerson 11 at W.R.R.B.C.

Next game: TBA

MLB

Sat. Sep. 13

Game 1: Chicago White Sox 5, Minnesota Twins 1

Game 2: Chicago White Sox 7, Minnesota Twins 6

Sun. Sep. 14

Minnesota (62-86) (RHP- T. May 2-4) at Chicago  (68-80) (RHP H. Noesi 8-9)

1:10 PM CST at U.S. Cellular Field

Sports Editors include Cory Voges, Ben Fugate, and Josh Nielsen

EDITORIAL:

Good evening from the computer of Senior Editor, Benjamin Fugate. Lord willing, this paper will be a weekly update to your life and ministry. We welcome any articles, editorial, or letters to the editor via e-mail to lostlaketribune@gmail.com.

Wherever we look today, we see that we cannot trust others completely. We cannot trust local police in Pope County, MN to prosecute child abusers. We cannot trust pro sports league commissioners to punish players fairly. We cannot trust the Minnesota governor to tell the truth about paying a lawyer for giving Mark Dayton advice on the state shutdown in 2012. We cannot trust our president to protect us against invaders from the southern border. We cannot trust “consenting adults” to be just that in an intimate relationship. Whom can we trust? Where can we find refuge and with whom can we confide? The answer is found in the best book ever written.

According to Psalm 20:7 “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” The God of the Bible is the One we should trust. He created the world with the breath of his mouth, according to Genesis 1:1-31. Psalm 100:3 tells us “…it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” When we are in trouble, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1). God can protect all of us at the same time. According to Proverbs 18:10 “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runs into it, and is safe.” But trusting the Lord is not enough if we are not trusting in His Son, Jesus Christ, as our personal Savior. Jesus died for our sins because He is fully man and fully God. Paul and Silas in Acts 16:31 commanded the Philippian jailer and all people to “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved”. Romans 10:9, 10 tell us “ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:13 makes it simple enough for even a child to understand and respond “Whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.”

I would encourage you today to start and/or continue trusting in the Lord. It may seem like the world is caving in on you or on the systems that you love and cherish, but God has an ultimate plan and you can be a part of His grace. If you are already a Christian, then continue trusting in the Lord and His Word. If you are not a believer, then “now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (II Corinthians 6:2)

Send me an e-mail at benfugate2005@yahoo.com or lostlaketribune@gmail.com for more truths from God’s Word.