Eagan police are asking the public’s help in identifying a man suspected of stealing charity donation jars off a convenience store counter.

Police on Tuesday released pictures from store surveillance video of a man who they say distracted a store clerk at SuperAmerica, 2250 Cliff Road, at about 1 p.m. April 6 and snatched two donations jars meant for Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul. The man, who also stole a pack of cigarettes, was driving an older white sedan.

This guy reached behind the counter and snatched cigarettes and 2 charity jars meant for children’s hospital. Call Eagan PD if you can ID. pic.twitter.com/8lwy481zVx

— Eagan Police (@EaganPolice) April 11, 2017

The jars contained about $5 in cash and change between them, said Eagan police officer Aaron Machtemes, department spokesman.

“I know that it’s not a lot of money, but due to the nature of the theft, we want to ID this person,” Machtemes said. “In my experience, if someone does it once, they tend to want to do it again.”

Just over a year ago, store surveillance pictures released by Eagan police that showed a man stealing charity donation jars from two gas stations quickly led to the 26-year-old suspect turning himself in — at the urging of his mother.

“He was caught, and his mom brought him into our lobby,” Machtemes said. “She got mad at him and confronted him about it, and he admitted to the crime.”

A Burnsville High School music teacher had sex with a 16-year-old boy and sent nude photos of himself to a 15-year-old boy, according to criminal charges filed Wednesday.

Erik Michael Akervik, 29, of Burnsville, was charged Wednesday in Dakota County District Court with two felonies — third-degree criminal sexual conduct and electronic solicitation of a child.

Akervik remained jailed Wednesday in lieu of $150,000 bail without conditions or $100,000 with conditions.

According to the criminal complaint:

On Monday, a report was made to a resource officer at Burnsville High School about sexually inappropriate communications sent by Akervik to a 15-year-old student. The student reported that Akervik added him as a friend on several social media apps and websites about a year earlier.

He said that about three weeks ago, Akervik began communicating with him through Snapchat and sent a message that said, “I’d like to get to know you closer and better.”

During this conversation, which lasted two or three days, the student received nude photos from Akervik. The student used a third-party phone app to save the photos.

Police recovered a full-body naked photo of Akervik from the student’s phone.

During the conversation with the student, Akervik admitted to “taking the virginity of a 15 or 16 year old” and made comments leading to the possible identity of the victim.

Based on information provided by school officials, police made contact with another Burnsville High School student who said that he had been invited to Akervik’s apartment in December. While he and Akervik were watching television, Akervik started kissing him and proceeded to engage in intercourse with him. The student was 16 at the time.

It is a felony under Minnesota law for a teacher to have sexual relations with a student who is 16  or 17 years old if the teacher is more than 48 months older than the student, Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom said in a statement.

Backstrom added that if anyone has information concerning other potential victims, they should contact Burnsville police Sgt. Patrick Gast at 952-895-4609.

Akervik has been employed by the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district since August 2013, working as a high school music teacher the entire time.

For the past seven years, he worked part time at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, directing a choir for middle-school boys and playing piano for its high school choir.

His next court appearance is set for May 11.

Farmington soon will have a new police dog on the streets.

Last month, Farmington Police Detective Chris Lutz and K-9 Caesar began a 12-week basic handler certification course through St. Paul police.

Caesar will replace Bosco, the city’s first K-9. Bosco, who has been with the police department since 2009, is easing into medical retirement but will continue to live with his handler, Officer Travis Sundvall.

“Bosco will be around for some drug sniffs, but as far as active-duty searches, we put him on the sideline,” Police Chief Brian Lindquist said.

The approximate $12,000 cost of the new K-9 and the handler course was covered by community donations, Lindquist said.

To help with the cost of food, veterinary bills and ongoing training for Caesar, Farmington’s two municipally owned liquor stores will be collecting donations through the end of April.

The Burnsville High School music teacher charged this week with having sex with a male student and sending nude photos to another is now under investigation for sending “inappropriate messages” to several youth from the Minneapolis church where he directed a boys choir.

Burnsville police said Friday that they began investigating the new allegations against teacher Erik Michael Akervik after being contacted this week by officials from Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, where for the past six years Akervik worked part time directing a choir for middle-school boys and playing piano for its high school choir.

Akervik, 29, of Burnsville, was charged Wednesday in Dakota County District Court with third-degree criminal sexual conduct and electronic solicitation of a child.

Dennis Johnson, interim senior pastor at Mount Olivet, wrote in an email to church members Thursday that church youth have come forward with allegations. The church no longer employs Akervik, he added.

“We are saddened and shocked by the information that has come to light in the past week, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims,” Johnson wrote. “We have also heard from several youth at Mount Olivet who have received inappropriate messages from Mr. Akervik. These incidents are being reported to the appropriate authorities.”

Akervik was released from Dakota County jail Wednesday after posting a $10,000 cash bond. Conditions of his release include no contact with anyone under age 18 without approval from a probation officer; no contact with Burnsville High School students; and staying off school grounds.

On Friday, Burnsville Police Chief Eric Gieseke said that if anyone has information about other potential victims, they should notify police or a trusted adult so the information can become part of the investigation.

Katie Bernhjelm, who works as a marketing manager for the Minnesota Vikings, has been chosen to fill a vacated seat on the Farmington City Council.

The city council on Monday is expected to appoint Bernhjelm to serve out the rest of Tim Pitcher’s term, which runs through December 2018, City Administrator David McKnight said. Bernhjelm will also be sworn into office Monday and begin working with the council, McKnight said.

Pitcher, a first-term council member elected in November 2014, resigned March 9, citing a new job that will move him out of Farmington.

Bernhjelm has been part of the Vikings front office since May 2013. In her current role as manager of marketing partnerships, she works with team sponsors.

Bernhjelm previously worked in marketing and business development for the Mall of America.

She was among nine candidates who applied for the open city council seat. A special election was not required by state law because there are less than two years remaining in Pitcher’s term.

City council members interviewed the candidates last week and Bernhjelm surfaced as the unanimous No. 1 choice, McKnight said.

“She had a great interview. She was prepared and has some visions for the city and the marketing experience, which the council liked,” said McKnight, who sat in on the interviews but did not participate. “She asked some great questions.”

Bernhjelm said Friday the team’s decision to build its new headquarters and practice facility in nearby Eagan played a part in why she and her husband, Will, bought a home in Farmington in July. They previously lived in Burnsville.

Local politics has been on her radar for some time, she said.

“I’ve been involved in local chambers from a business perspective,” said Bernhjelm, 30, who grew up in Apple Valley and graduated from Eastview High School in 2005. “But this will give me an opportunity to learn more about a place where we plan to live for a long time.”

A South St. Paul man has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for assaulting his ex-girlfriend and trying to kidnap her in February at her Chanhassen workplace.

Mark Anthony Galatowitsch, 28, pleaded guilty last week in Carver County District Court to attempted kidnapping and felony domestic assault and was sentenced to 45 months in prison. As part of a plea agreement, an additional kidnapping count and an assault with a dangerous weapon charge were dismissed.

According to a criminal complaint, Galatowitsch confronted his ex-girlfriend in the parking lot of her work at General Mills at about 10 p.m. Feb. 11. When she refused to get into his car, he grabbed her, dragged her by her hair and tried to force her to get inside.

During a struggle, Galatowitsch punched the woman several times in the head, according to the charges.

Galatowitsch fled in his vehicle, and South St. Paul police found Galatowitsch two days later hiding in a closet in his home.

A security camera at General Mills captured most of the incident.

In 2015, Galatowitsch was convicted of false imprisonment for assaulting a different woman at her work in Burnsville and forcing her into his car. He has also been convicted of criminal sexual conduct and violating an order for protection. 

Eagan police said Wednesday that they have identified a man caught on store surveillance video stealing charity donation jars from a gas station counter last week and have charged him with misdemeanor theft.

On April 12, police were contacted by someone who saw the pictures and identified the suspect as 25-year-old Michael Kevin Dullinger, said Eagan police officer Aaron Machtemes, department spokesman. A relative also identified Dullinger as the man in the pictures, according to Machtemes.

Police have reached out to Dullinger but have not yet spoken with him, Machtemes said. Dullinger was mailed a citation for misdemeanor theft Wednesday.

“For whatever reason, he felt the need to steal from a children’s hospital,” Machtemes said.

Dullinger was convicted of theft twice in 2015 and once in 2016, state court records show.

Shortly after his 2013 release from prison for kidnapping and domestic assault, Joseph Thomas Hawkinson became a new man.

He assumed a new identity, Wesley Scoggins. He created a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile. He landed a job at a small company called Srills Products, which now makes insecticides and herbicides in rural southern Dakota County.

Along the way, he duped those closest to him, including a new girlfriend and co-workers who knew him as “Wes.”

But the ruse came to an abrupt end Feb. 13, when members of the U.S. Marshals Service North Star Fugitive Task Force and the Minnesota Department of Corrections Fugitive Apprehension Unit rushed into his workplace in Vermillion Township and arrested him at gunpoint. A loaded 9 mm semiautomatic pistol was in his hip holster, underneath his shirt.

Hawkinson “looked surprised and embarrassed,” said Jeremy Rounsville, the owner and president of Srills Products who was next to Hawkinson at the time of the arrest and was also ordered to put his hands up.

“He put his hands up … and put his head down,” Rounsville said.

Hawkinson, 29, had been a fugitive since March 2014, when he skipped a scheduled meeting with his parole officer and the state Department of Corrections issued a warrant for his arrest.

Police in Crystal, where Hawkinson had been living, learned he was no longer there; he was charged in Hennepin County with failure to register as a predatory offender.

Now, Hawkinson has been charged with two felonies in Dakota County District Court — one for the failure to register and another for possessing a firearm as an ineligible person. He’s also charged with misdemeanor identity theft for assuming the name of Wesley Scoggins, who is an actual person who lives in St. Paul.

Hawkinson has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is awaiting a May 1 court date. He remains in the Dakota County Jail in lieu of $80,000 bail.

“This was a pretty sophisticated plan on his part,” said Tim Leslie, Dakota County sheriff. “And he was right here in our backyard.”

Chris Clifford, supervisory deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service in Minneapolis, said Hawkinson managed to stay on the lam by living a regular working-man’s life and keeping out of trouble.

“Most of the time, criminals go out and continue to keep on committing crimes to support their life while they’re on the run,” Clifford said. “It is very unusual for them to actually get a job and hold down a job for quite a few years and actually start up a new relationship to fit back into society. I could probably only name a handful of times that they’ve actually done that — and we arrest about 500 people a year in the district.”

THE CRIME

In September 2009, a 21-year-old Hawkinson assaulted his 19-year-old girlfriend by dragging her by her ankles down his basement stairs and choking her until she lost consciousness, according to court documents. He also pushed her head into a wall, put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her.

Two days later, he was arrested after breaking into the girlfriend’s house in Golden Valley. Tucked into his pants was a .45-caliber handgun that had seven rounds in the eight-round magazine — and one round in the chamber.

Golden Valley police Sgt. Dave Kuhnly was a patrol officer at the time and the first one on the scene. He spotted Hawkinson in the driveway and held him at gunpoint until backup arrived. Recovered from the trunk of Hawkinson’s car were a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, two fully loaded magazines with hollow-point rounds and nearly 2 ounces of marijuana.

“There’s no question in my mind that he was there to kill her,” Kuhnly said this month. “It’s one of those deals where, honestly, it’s by the grace of God that she’s alive. It was a domestic-abuse situation at the very extreme.”

Hawkinson was convicted of kidnapping, domestic assault, burglary and second-degree assault. He was sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in prison but was released in July 2013.

THE NEW LIFE

About a year later, Rounsville met Hawkinson through a friend of a friend and offered him an entry-level job.

“I saw that he had some skills,” said Rounsville, who started Srills Products 12 years ago in a former veterinary building in Brooklyn Center. “He worked up to pretty much be my assistant, my vice president.”

Reflecting this month on his relationship with Hawkinson, Rounsville described him as “laid back, calm” and not at all suspicious. Rounsville even agreed to let Hawkinson live in an apartment in the company’s Brooklyn Center building.

“I would call him a good guy,” said Rounsville, 35. “You’d never question it, believe me.”

It was that good-guy charm that helped persuade Gladys Rojas to start dating Hawkinson in 2015 after meeting him through an online dating site. On Facebook, they posted pictures of their dates — a train ride, a cooking class, a trip to a pumpkin patch — and expressed their love for each other.

“We were friends kind of at the beginning and he wanted a relationship,” Rojas, 27, said recently. “So I gave it a shot.”

Around Christmas 2015, he gave her a promise ring. They began living together in 2016 (investigators have conflicting information about where), eventually settling into a home they rented about a mile from Srills’ new location in Dakota County.

Hawkinson developed a bond with Rojas’ young son. He dropped him off at school most mornings and took care of him after school.

“They were close,” Rojas said. “My son doesn’t really understand much of what is going right now.”

Rojas and Rounsville told investigators they knew nothing about Hawkinson’s criminal past, and nothing has been found to contradict their stories.

Rojas said she has since broken up with Hawkinson.

Rounsville said Hawkinson called him and apologized.

“At first, I was mad … we’ve been through a lot over the last 2½ years,” Rounsville said. “It’s a really difficult situation when you know someone that duped you for that long, but then grew to be your friend at the same time. You have to try to think of it like, ‘What is more important?’ Now, since then, I’ve looked into the charges that he had before and I have a hard time realizing, putting two and two together that he did something like that. He just never seemed like that type of guy.”

Rounsville said he is embarrassed that he let himself be deceived.

“Wouldn’t you be?” he asked.

FACEBOOK DID HIM IN

In the end, Facebook was Hawkinson’s undoing.

Investigators from the Minnesota Department of Corrections received a tip that Hawkinson was using the Wesley Scoggins alias. A quick search on Facebook showed a Wesley Scoggins page with pictures that matched Hawkinson’s appearance.

During questioning, Hawkinson came clean, sort of. He told investigators his real name, but said he made up the fake name. That was a lie, investigators say, as the number on the Social Security card matched that of the real Wesley Scoggins. An investigator reached out to Scoggins, who said his card had been stolen.

Scoggins, 28, told the Pioneer Press that he has “absolutely no idea” who Hawkinson is and “was floored” when an investigator told him a fugitive had his Social Security card.

“I’m a family man,” he said, adding he is engaged to his girlfriend and they are raising their 3-year-old son. “I’m the furthest thing from a criminal.”

He said he’s a private person, even going so far as to purposely stay off Facebook and other social media sites.

“I don’t do social media,” Scoggins said. “It gets people in trouble.”

WHY HE RAN

Sitting in jail last week, Hawkinson said in an interview with the Pioneer Press that he decided to run in 2014 because he had cut his hand while laying carpet, was taking painkillers and knew he’d fail a drug test when he met with his parole officer.

“Honestly, when I first went on the run, I wasn’t expecting to be around much,” he said. “I was going to disappear and most likely kill myself. I don’t know if it was painkillers or stress, but everything was too much.”

Instead, he shut out his family members and friends — and vanished.

“I was already on the run, so the only way to survive was to just kind of to start over,” he said.

Hawkinson believes he was able to stay undetected by hiding in plain sight.

“They expect you to run as far away as you can and hide,” he said. “As a family, we’d go out to eat on a Friday night for pizza or for an all-you-can-eat fish fry, or whatever.”

He said no one asked, so he didn’t tell. 

“I didn’t want to put someone in the spot where they’d have to turn me in or not, and then they’d be committing a crime, too,” he said.

He realizes that Facebook was the beginning of the end.

“It was a tough spot because I kind of needed something like that for work stuff,” he said. “It’s kind of unusual if you don’t have that for work.”

His most serious charge of illegally possessing a firearm carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence and/or a $30,000 fine.

Hawkinson’s advice to anyone tempted to run is not to. Instead, he says, get a good attorney and fight it out.

“It seems OK running,” Hawkinson said. “Until you finally get your life together and you get the life that you always dreamed of … and then they come busting into your work.”

Nearly two decades ago, South St. Paul eyed a former demolition landfill along the Mississippi River and envisioned a dazzling riverfront park with trails and ball fields.

Over the years, city, county, state and federal officials worked to find funding to clean up and develop the land, which was a demolition dumping ground until the mid-1980s, largely used when Swift & Co. tore down its nearby meatpacking operation.

Now the northern half of the 87-acre park, known as Kaposia Landing, is complete and ready for public use, with four softball fields, a baseball field, restroom/concessions building, parking lot and connections to the Mississippi River Regional Trail.

A grand-opening event will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday and include a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Jimmy Francis, current and former city council members and Dakota County officials.

The improvements were made possible by South St. Paul voters’ 2014 approval of borrowing $10 million for parks, with about half the money dedicated to Kaposia Landing. More offerings, such as picnic areas and a performance amphitheater, are planned for the southern half of the wedge-shaped park, which is bordered by the St. Paul city limit on the north, the Mississippi River on the east and Concord Street on the west.

The park’s main road, Metzen Parkway, will also be dedicated. In 2015, the road was named after Sen. Jim Metzen to honor his work in securing $7 million in state bonding bill money in 2005 and 2006 to convert the former landfill, known as “Port Crosby,” into a public park.

Metzen, who represented his hometown of South St. Paul for four decades, died July 11, 2016, of lung cancer. He was 72.

The city purchased the former landfill site for $1 million in 2000 and began cleaning up the land.

Dakota County built the Mississippi River Regional Trail through it a year later.

In 2003, a bridge was built over railroad tracks at Bryant Avenue, allowing access to the property for future development.

An off-leash dog park opened in 2008, but a lack of money stalled further development — until the bond measure was passed by voters.

“The residents who voted for (the bond measure) deserve a ton of credit,” said Chris Esser, director of parks and recreation. “We wouldn’t be able to develop the property according to the master plan if it wasn’t for that.”

After the ceremony, youth and high school baseball and softball teams will break in the ball fields.

At 1 p.m., the softball teams from South St. Paul and Henry Sibley high schools will play. A game between the schools’ baseball teams starts at 4 p.m.

For the second time in a year, Minnesota State Patrol trooper Paul Kingery rescued an injured bald eagle from the side of an interstate in Eagan.

This time, however, the ending was not a happy one. The bird died, apparently from its injuries.

Kingery saw the injured eagle April 16 on the side of southbound Interstate 35E near the Pilot Knob Road exit in Eagan. As he did during his first encounter with another eagle, Kingery used his coat to carry away the bird, the State Patrol said in a Facebook post Sunday.

“We might have an eagle whisperer on our hands,” the post read.

The male bird was brought to the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota. But during an admission exam, it had to be euthanized because of internal injuries and broken bones in its right leg, a university spokeswoman said. 

Last March, Kingery, of the East Metro District, spotted the eagle on the shoulder of Interstate 494 near Pilot Knob Road. The bird, later named “Trooper” by Raptor Center staff, had internal injuries, but no broken bones.

Once it healed, just over a month later, Kingery helped release it back into the wild at St. Croix Valley Carpenter Nature Center in Denmark Township.

Last year, the Raptor Center admitted 180 injured eagles for care.

Officials are investigating the cause of a fire that broke out Monday night at a rural Dakota County business where a fugitive was arrested earlier this year.

The fire at the office of Srills Products, 19360 Hogan Ave. in Vermillion Township, started in a wall and spread to the attic, said Mike Schutt, chief of the Hastings Fire Department, whose coverage area includes the township. Part of the building and its contents were destroyed.

“At this point in time, it does not appear to be suspicious in origin,” Schutt said Tuesday.

Firefighters were called to the blaze around 7:15 p.m. and encountered heavy smoke pouring out of roof vents and roof lines. A crew was sent inside to open the ceiling, vent the roof and attack the blaze, which was extinguished in about an hour, Schutt said.

No one was injured.

Srills Products makes insecticides and herbicides in a second building on the property; that building was not damaged.

On Feb. 13, the U.S. Marshals Service North Star Fugitive Task Force and the Minnesota Department of Corrections Fugitive Apprehension Unit stormed the business and arrested Joseph Thomas Hawkinson, who had eluded authorities for nearly three years after violating terms of his parole.

Hawkinson, a convicted felon, worked at the business for about two years under an alias, Wesley Scoggins, eventually becoming its vice president.

Jeremy Rounsville, owner and president of Srills Products, told authorities and the Pioneer Press that he did not know Hawkinson’s true identity and past criminal history.

On Tuesday, Rounsville said the fire destroyed his office and everything in it, including paper files, computers and printers.

“The fire department had to gut the inside of the building and flood it,” he said. “Everything is ruined.”

Rounsville said he was working in the building Monday night when the fire broke out and called 911.

“Luckily, I caught it right away and got the fire department out so it didn’t spread to the rest of the building,” he said.

Rounsville rents the two buildings and a home next door.

“We have insurance,” he said. “No one got hurt … that’s the important thing.”

Hawkinson has been charged with two felonies in Dakota County District Court — one for failure to register as a predatory offender and another for possessing a firearm as an ineligible person. He’s also charged with misdemeanor identity theft for assuming the name of Wesley Scoggins, who is an actual person who lives in St. Paul.

Hawkinson has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is awaiting a May 1 court date.

South St. Paul plans to make changes to its odor ordinance, a one-of-a-kind policy that is being challenged in federal court.

The city council this week directed city staff to add to the ordinance the name of the hand-held technology the city uses to measure smelly air after a complaint is made, as well as list the threshold that defines whether the air is considered foul or acceptable stench.

The ordinance, enacted in 2014, is the only such city ordinance in Minnesota.

City Administrator Steve King said the proposed ordinance tweaks, which the council is expected to approve next month, are “the direct result of us getting sued.”

“It convinced us that we should go in and spell out specifically the tools that we’re using to measure deviation from normal,” he said.

Sanimax, an animal rendering plant, asks the court in its federal lawsuit filed in February to rule that the odor ordinance is “unconstitutionally void for vagueness.”

It alleges the ordinance imposes a regulatory burden because the policy does not specify “objective odor verification standards” to determine whether a violation has occurred, and that a violation depends on the “vagaries of human responses to smells.”

Sanimax has been one of a handful of companies in the city’s former stockyards area consistently blamed by residents and city officials for a lingering odor that has led to complaints, studies and lots of crinkled noses.

The revised ordinance would specify the city’s testing device — “Nasal Ranger,” an olfactometer made by Lake Elmo-based St. Croix Sensory. It would also include the minimum level of odor units — seven — that would make an odor complaint valid.

In a memo to the South St. Paul City Council this week, City Attorney Kori Land wrote that putting the testing requirements in the ordinance would provide “an objective standard by which we are confirming the complaints.”

City Planner Peter Hellegers said Wednesday that the city has used the Nasal Ranger device and the seven-unit threshold since the ordinance was enacted in 2014, but that officials chose not to include them in case olfactometer technology changed and they decided to go with another device.

The seven-unit threshold is commonly used elsewhere in the country, he added.

“The tough part for a city like us is there is not a state regulation or a state standard, so we’re kind of out on an island here trying to come up with an odor ordinance,” Hellegers said.

Also this week, the city council learned from two other odor generators — Twin City Hide and Twin City Tanning — that they plan to build state-of-the-art facilities in phases over the next few years that should not only increase productivity but reduce their odor emissions.

Plans could before the planning commission and city council next month, King said.

An Eagan firefighter is suing the city and its fire chief, claiming he was demoted from a battalion chief position because he is gay.

In a civil lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court, firefighter Dan Benson alleges discrimination based on his sexual orientation and violation of his constitutional rights by Eagan Fire Chief Mike Scott and the city.

Benson joined the fire department about 18 years ago, moving up along the way to become battalion chief. As such, he was paid a monthly stipend. He also contributed to a fire department pension.

Sometime around November of last year, Scott told Benson and other firefighters at a meeting that they would have to reapply for their positions, according to the lawsuit.

During the meeting, Scott asked Benson whether he had a spouse or significant other and he said he was married to a man named Greg and that they were acting as fathers to a son, the lawsuit said. Benson added that they had hosted two exchange students that they considered sons.

Benson previously kept his sexual orientation private, according to the lawsuit.

Less than a month later, Scott told Benson that he was not going to be reappointed battalion chief and asked him to remain with the department as an on-call firefighter, according to the complaint.

“Based on the timing of his being ‘outed’ and the pre-textual reasons given for his demotion from battalion chief to an on-call firefighter,” the lawsuit read, “it is clear that although the Eagan fire department may employ gay ‘black hat’ firefighters, defendant Scott, as chief, will not consider them for leadership positions.”

As a result of the demotion, Benson is losing pay and has reduced benefits, including his pension.

Benson is asking for compensatory damages in excess of $50,000, as well as punitive damages against Scott to be determined at trial.

When reached Thursday by phone, Scott declined to comment.

The city issued a statement disputing the allegations.

It said that the fire department, with the support of city administration, has consolidated from six fire stations to three facilities. The changes meant a reorganization and ultimately fewer leadership positions, according to the city.

In early 2016, fire department leadership, in consultation with the city administration, agreed that all members of the fire department could apply for the new and restructured positions in an open appointment process, the statement read.

The city plans to defend against the lawsuit “because it believes that it engaged in a proper process and it, again, denies any discrimination,” the statement read.

Benson continues to work as a paid on-call firefighter.

According to the city’s website, the fire department includes about 90 paid on-call firefighters, six full-time firefighter/inspectors and two deputy chiefs.

Scott became the city’s first full-time fire chief in 2006, after 19 years as a volunteer firefighter. He gave up his day job as a captain in the Dakota County sheriff’s department and almost 20 years in law enforcement to take the post.

Scott’s father, George Scott, was a charter member of the department, and his older sister, Linda Myhre, was the city’s first female firefighter and later its second female police officer.

Carol Day, Nancy Gagliardi and Diana Ostrowski are best buds.

Teaching alongside one another at St. Joseph’s Catholic School over the past 40 years will do that, as will spending much of their summer breaks vacationing and relaxing together.

“We do everything together,” Gagliardi said.

So it just made sense for them to retire from the West St. Paul school as a trio, they say.

When Day, Gagliardi and Ostrowski work their last day on June 9, they will leave behind 130 years of combined service to St. Joseph’s, a preschool through eighth-grade institution that opened its doors in 1949.

For Day and Ostrowski, St. Joseph’s has provided their first and only teaching jobs. Gagliardi taught a year in South St. Paul before joining the school in 1971. 

“We feel blessed to have had them all for this long,” said the school’s office manager, Lisa Wrobel, echoing the sentiments of many who showed up at a retirement party for the three teachers Thursday night at the school.

Guests at the celebration included current and former teachers and administrators — and lots of former students, including Day’s daughter, Piper Day, who Gagliardi and Ostrowski taught.

“They’ve been so close to my family, both of them,” said Piper Day, now a 22-year-old college senior. “They came to the hospital when my mom had me. They see each other I feel like once a week outside of school. I text them. I call them. We’re all a very close family.”

Gagliardi, a learning specialist, is the most-tenured teacher at St. Joseph’s. When she started there, she was among the school’s first all-lay faculty.

“The year before I came here, it was all nuns,” said Gagliardi, who was a third-grade teacher until 1990, when she began working as a learning specialist in the upper elementary grades.

Ostrowski joined St. Joseph’s in 1973 and has spent her entire tenure as a reading and math learning specialist.

“This school is like my family,” said Ostrowski, 65, of White Bear Lake. “I have a family, then I have this family. It’s always been wonderful.”

Day started teaching at St. Joe’s in 1977. Her first day on the job was during teacher workshops, before the beginning of the school year.

“Two girls asked me if I would like to sit with them,” recalled Day, 63, who lives in Eagan. “It was Nancy and Diana. I’ve been sitting with them ever since.”

Day was hired when the school had more than 800 students. Not unlike other Catholic schools in the area, St. Joe’s has seen a steady decline in numbers for a variety of reasons; its kindergarten through grade eight enrollment currently totals 315.

“I have 13 students now,” said Day, who taught first grade for three decades and second grade the rest of her career. “It was 31 students before. That was the most I’ve had.”

They said the temptation to leave St. Joe’s to teach at another school was never strong.

“This is a great school, with great people,” said Gagliardi, 69, who lives in Inver Grove Heights. “It’s like, why would you leave?” 

Principal Greg Wesely, who is wrapping up his first year at the school, said he has appreciated his short time with them.

“I arrived in July and these three wonderful women, as well as the rest of the staff, have been so welcoming,” he said. “That’s just who they are … and that’s who we are as a school.”

Although their retirement will cause a void, their service is an accomplishment to rejoice, Wrobel said.

“We’re happy to celebrate them,” she said, “because they have put in so much time and care and love to all of our kids.”

For the first time in about five years, a tiger cub has been born at the Minnesota Zoo.

The female Amur cub was born at the Apple Valley zoo at 7:58 p.m. April 26, weighing in at 1.7 pounds.

The cub is the first offspring for mother Sundari, who was born at the zoo in June 2012. The cub’s father, Putin, sired two other litters in Denmark, where he lived before coming to the zoo in 2015.

“Both the cub and Sundari are doing well,” Josh Le, a zoo spokesman, said Tuesday.

Amur tigers, also known as the Siberian tiger, are exhibited on the Minnesota Zoo’s Northern Trail.

The cub’s arrival follows two unexpected deaths of Amur tigers at the Minnesota Zoo in 2016. Last May, 3-year-old Nadya died unexpectedly after falling ill. In November, the zoo’s oldest tiger, 16-year-old Molniy, died due to chronic health issues from old age.

The zoo plans to hold a public naming contest for the new cub later this year.

Mikayla Raines says her fight for foxes is not over.

A year ago, Lakeville officials let Raines keep foxes that she rescues from fur farms — as long as she lives on her 10-acre property and does not have more than three of the animals at a time.

The city says she has not been living up to her end of the bargain and is now considering whether to revoke her interim-use permit.

According to the city, Raines has been keeping more than the three foxes allowed.

City Associate Planner Frank Dempsey said Wednesday that the city received a tip in June 2016 that Raines had more than three foxes. He said he visited Raines at her property and that she told him she had four foxes.

This past March, Dempsey made another visit. He said he counted five foxes and that she told him another had gotten loose several weeks before and was still missing.

Contacted Wednesday, Raines did not deny that she is violating a term of the permit. She said she currently has five adult foxes and four cubs, which she is bottle-feeding.

She said when she agreed to terms of the permit she didn’t know her passion for foxes would turn into a rescue, which goes by Mikdolittles Fox Rescue.

“And now I have five. … oh, my gosh, two more on 10 acres with surrounded woods that nobody can see,” she said. “It’s a big issue to them, I guess. You can’t see them from the street. They’re not loud and they don’t stink.”

The 22-year-old said she plans to ask the city to amend her permit and keep the foxes. She said the city should take into account that the property is zoned agricultural and that fur-farm foxes are considered agricultural animals under state statute.

“So I should be able to have as many as someone could have pigs or horses or whatever out here,” she said.

Furthermore, she said, she never gave Dempsey permission to inspect the property, which is owned by her mother.

“He just showed up one day,” she said. “I was in the fox cages and turned around and he was standing right there.”

Raines has a USDA license to exhibit and sell foxes, but does the latter only to fox sanctuaries, or people who have track records owning foxes, preferably with a license similar to hers.

Most of her foxes are “rescues,” born in captivity with some defect that makes them unappealing to the fur farms that ultimately would kill them, she said.

“These animals are my life,” she said, adding she just received nonprofit status for the rescue operation a week ago.

Raines and her foxes — one goes by the name Farrah Foxxett — have attracted a large following on social media, where they have more than 50,000 followers on Instagram and 750 followers on Facebook. Many of those followers are expressing their support — at the city’s expense.

“They need to butt out and get a life,” one Facebook commenter wrote.

Rules are rules, Dempsey said.

“It’s the position we have to take,” he said. “It sounds heartless, but that’s not the point. The point is to get compliance with the zoning ordinance.”

A fugitive who eluded authorities for three years before his recent capture in rural Dakota County has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Two other charges were dismissed: felony failure to register as a predatory offender and misdemeanor identity theft.

Hawkinson was arrested Feb. 13 at his workplace in Vermillion Township, about a mile from where he had been living with his girlfriend and her young son. The two-time convicted felon had a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic pistol in a hip holster, underneath his shirt.

Hawkinson, who in March pleaded not guilty to the three charges, “finally understood it” and agreed to take the plea deal, his attorney, Sam McCloud, said Thursday.

“The truth of the matter is, when it’s time to tell the bottom line to a guy, I have to tell it like is,” McCloud said. “And for him there was no way that any lawyer in the whole world could get a jury to give him a pass on the gun charge. (The pistol) was on him. So, let’s get on with it, get it over with and be done with it. Going to trial isn’t going to get you anything except maybe convicted of the other two charges.”

Shortly after his July 2013 release from prison for kidnapping and domestic assault, Hawkinson took on a new identity — Wesley Scoggins, who is an actual person who lives in St. Paul.

He became a fugitive in March 2014, when he skipped a scheduled meeting with his probation officer and the state Department of Corrections issued a warrant for his arrest.

He shut out his family and friends — and vanished.

“I was already on the run,” he told the Pioneer Press during a jailhouse interview last month. “So the only way to survive was to just kind of to start over.”

He will serve his sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud.

The Rotary Club of Eagan is pledging to give $150,000 to a new arts non-profit, fueling its capital campaign to purchase the city’s former fire administration building.

Art Works Eagan, which was formed last year, plans to offer programming and opportunities in the building not currently available in the city — studios for working artists, a small performance venue, a fine arts gallery, retail space, and a workshop for metalworking, woodworking, digital fabrication and more. 

In January, Art Works Eagan signed an agreement with the city to buy the 9,100-square-foot building located at 3795 Pilot Knob Road, across from City Hall, for $500,000.

The Rotary Club is committing $50,000 toward the purchase and $20,000 annually for the next five years, said Jerri Neddermeyer, president of Art Works Eagan.

The club’s 80 members plan to also volunteer their time and help paint and do work to the building, she said.

Eagan began marketing the two-story building around 2013 but had not landed a legitimate potential buyer until Artworks Eagan showed interest this fall.

“It’s a building with some peculiar limitations, but for an arts facility it doesn’t have those same limitations,” Neddermeyer said. For example, she said, the two garage bays are slated to become a ceramics studio and workshop, while the large unfinished basement will provide an industrial-type workshop space right away and maker’s space, she said.

Others have been inspired by Rotary’s donation, she said. A couple recently made a $25,000 donation toward the building’s purchase and has pledged $10,000 annually for five years.

Art Works Eagan has now secured $90,000 in donations toward purchasing the building and a combined $150,000 in five-year support pledges, Neddermeyer said.

“We need $150,000 more in up-front capital to cross the $350,000 capital campaign finish line, and now we know it can be done,” Neddermeyer said, adding the group continues to seek large donations, corporate and private sponsorships and “buy-in from every community member with an interest in building a better community through creativity.”

To learn more, go to artworkseagan.org.

A 27-year-old man is dead after a forklift accident at a Menards store in Burnsville last week.

Alec Michael Saunders of Burnsville suffered blunt-force chest injuries Friday at the store, the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said Tuesday. He was pronounced dead shortly before 9 a.m. Friday at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.

The store is on Minnesota 13, west of Interstate 35W.

The accident is being investigated by Burnsville police, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Hennepin County medical examiner’s office.

Former Dakota County Sheriff Don Gudmundson is a finalist for the interim sheriff job in Stearns County, Minn.

Gudmundson is one of three finalists named by the county board Tuesday. The others are Stearns County Chief Deputy Bruce Bechtold and Waite Park Police Chief David Bentrud. Thirteen people applied for the position.

Gudmundson, 69, started his law enforcement career in 1971 as an officer in Detroit. From 1978 to 1989, he was the elected sheriff of Fillmore County in southeastern Minnesota, where he grew up.

Gudmundson was Lakeville’s police chief from 1989 until he was elected Dakota County sheriff in November 1994. He held the sheriff’s position until 2010, when he decided to not seek re-election for a fifth term.

He was interim chief of Steele County, Minn., for most of 2010, before retiring again.

The county board will interview the finalists May 16 and plans to make its choice at its May 23 meeting.