St. Paul man sentenced to 11 years for assaulting, killing man in Minneapolis

A St. Paul man learned his future on Thursday after pleading guilty to a first-degree manslaughter charge in May.

Court records show Ryan Patrick Lidberg, 38, was sentenced to just over 11 years (134 months) in prison in the St. Cloud prison, with credit for 109 days already served.

RELATED: Charges: Man attacked friend, said fatal injuries were from slipping on ice

On Feb. 13, 2023, Minneapolis police officers responded to Abbot Northwestern Hospital just before 11 p.m. on a report of a 32-year-old man who was been brought there under suspicious circumstances a few days earlier and wasn’t going to survive. The victim, identified as 32-year-old Nicholas Allen Towner-Upshur, died at the hospital a short time later.

Investigators determined Towner-Upshur had gone to a comedy show in downtown Minneapolis on Feb. 10 with a few friends. Lidberg and another man told authorities that Towner-Upshur had slipped on ice and hit his head, which hospital staff determined to be inconsistent with the victim’s injuries, according to the criminal complaint.

Surveillance video confirmed the incident happened in an alley near the 1000 block of Washington Avenue South shortly before 9 p.m. The complaint said that Lidberg and another man could be seen on video chasing Towner-Upshur down an alley and attacking him. The video showed multiple instances of Towner-Upshur trying to get up and away from Lidberg, only to be knocked to the ground again.

The last punch by Lidberg appeared to cause Towner-Upshur’s head to snap back, court documents state, and Lidberg then got on his knees and punched his head area again. After that, he didn’t appear to move on his own again, a criminal complaint states.

Surveillance video showed that, after Towner-Upshur lay motionless for a few minutes, Lidberg called his girlfriend. She showed up nearly 25 minutes later, and Lidberg and the other friend loaded Towner-Upshur into the vehicle.

Despite being six blocks from Hennepin County Medical Center, the complaint notes that Lidberg’s girlfriend, who is a nurse, took Towner-Upshur to Abbott Northwestern, which was much farther away, meaning the victim was unconscious without medical attention for around 40 minutes by the time they got there.

After rolling the victim into the hospital in a wheelchair, court documents state that Lidberg was seen on video “grabbing his girlfriend by the collar, dragging her behind a column to hide from hospital staff, and pulling her close to his face to speak with her sternly.” They then drove away.