Saturday, May 28, 2011

MN Gun Violence, the Rest of One Story

From the STrib:

St. Louis Park fraud suspect charged in restaurant shooting

Charges say the gunman's father subdued him by hitting him over the head with a glass and choking him.

A St. Louis Park man charged earlier this week with insurance fraud now is charged with shooting up his family's restaurant in a drunken rage hours after his release from jail.
Nick Robert Lindee, 36, was charged Wednesday with firing shots inside Lindee's Saloon and Eatery at 919 Cambridge St. in Hopkins. Hennepin County prosecutors charged him with one count each of second-degree assault, reckless discharge of a firearm and first-degree damage to property risking bodily harm.
According to charges, Hopkins police responded at 8 a.m. Tuesday to the restaurant and spoke by phone with Lindee's father, who was inside with his son. The father told police the son was drunk and had a rifle and shotgun.
Police heard screams and breaking glass. They entered the restaurant to find Lindee knocked out on the floor, and his father, whom police described as visibly shaken, with a blood spot on his shirt.
The father explained that he hit his son over the head with a glass, wrestled the gun away and choked his son into unconsciousness. Eighteen holes from shotgun blasts were found throughout the establishment, a criminal complaint said.
According to the charges: Police handcuffed Lindee and interviewed the father, who said Lindee had been battling alcoholism and had been estranged from the family for a while.
The father said he heard from employees that Lindee was shooting up the restaurant, and the father went there and confronted his son. The father said that Lindee pointed the shotgun at him as Lindee drank from a whiskey bottle. He told his father he wanted to kill himself because of the insurance fraud investigation.
At one point, while Lindee was distracted, his father subdued him and got the gun away.
Lindee was charged Monday with insurance fraud and theft by swindle, both felonies, for allegedly making an insurance claim in December 2010 that $13,668 in guns were stolen from his home.
His insurance company paid the claim, but in February Lindee's girlfriend told police during a domestic dispute that he staged the burglary. On May 18 Lindee was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, and police allegedly found the reportedly stolen guns in his vehicle.
He was booked and released Monday, just 11 hours before the incident at the restaurant. He was in the county jail Wednesday in lieu of $100,000 bail for the assault charges and $10,000 bail for the fraud charges.
Abby Simons

3 comments:

  1. But, but, he was a kriminul! No LGO would ever do such a thing!!

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  2. 1. Beware alcohol.
    2. Don't piss off your girlfriend when she knows where your personal skeletons are and has the keys to the closet you keep them in.

    So, this appears to be another person who purchased guns legally...and then stopped being legal.

    Kudos to the guys father for taking his son on while armed. It may have prevented the police from shooting him.

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  3. It sure seems like there are more of these legal gun owners going bad than originally thought.

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