Steve Lee
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GRAND FORKS — An Emerado couple have been charged with child neglect or abuse after sheriff’s officials say they found unsanitary and hazardous living conditions inside their home. Richard Elskoe, 48, and Kimberly Elskoe, 39, pleaded not guilty this week in state district court in Grand Forks, each to a Class C felony count of child neglect or abuse. Judge Sonja Clapp set their pretrial conferences for Jan. 9 after their arraignment Monday. Cpl.
BELCOURT, N.D. — A man is in custody in Belcourt in connection with a suspicious death there last week and has been charged in tribal court, according to federal officials. Belcourt is on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, where the federal court system has jurisdiction over serious crimes and tribal courts have jurisdiction over lesser crimes. “It’s my understanding that tribal authorities lodged some charges in connection with the death,” said Timothy Purdon, U.S. Attorney for North Dakota.
ROSEAU, Minn. — Geoffrey Biteman, 18, pleaded guilty Monday to stealing of an airplane in Roseau as part of a plea deal, said county prosecutor Michael Grover. During a hearing Monday in state district court in Roseau, Biteman and a judge agreed to the deal, which includes 60 days in jail and 60 days on electronic home monitoring. The crime of motor vehicle theft has a top sentence of 10 years in prison and $20,000 fine. During the summer and fall, Biteman had stolen the 1971 Cessna 150 and flown it several times into the Thief River Falls, Minn., airport. He later left the plane at a St.
PEQUOT LAKES, Minn. — “I don’t try to dwell on the horror of how Dru was taken,” Linda Walker said last week from her home here.
PEQUOT LAKES, Minn.
GRAND FORKS — Alfonso Rodriguez was not insane when he deliberately killed Dru Sjodin 10 years ago after kidnapping her from a Grand Forks mall, according to the prosecution’s medical experts, who interviewed him on death row this past summer. Federal prosecutors in Fargo on Wednesday released documents containing transcripts of the interviews as part of the government’s reply to Rodriguez’s last-stage appeal of his sentence. He is shown describing in his own words chilling details of his encounter with Sjodin in the parking lot of Columbia Mall on Nov. 22, 2003.
GRAND FORKS — Two men who pleaded guilty to smuggling guns to Canada after being arrested in Grand Forks were sentenced last month to federal prison. But his stepmother said undercover Mounties posing as Hell’s Angels intimidated Shawn Hartnell for months to do a gun deal. Hartnell, 30, was sentenced Oct. 17 to 20 months in federal prison, followed by two years of probation, with credit for the nine months he’s served since his Feb.
GRAND FORKS — When Rodney Brossart’s trial on charges of terrorizing of deputies and theft of cattle opens today in Grand Forks, the prosecutor wants to introduce evidence that the Lakota farmer resisted arrest years earlier by the same deputy who shot him with a stun gun and arrested him in June 2011 over six stray animals. It wasn’t clear Monday if the judge will allow it. Brossart’s 2011 arrest over a neighbor’s six stray head of cattle he had penned up on his land led to several months of a low-grade stand-off in which Brossart and his family refused to allow deputies on their farmstead