Roseville police: 1 dead, 4 hurt; 17-year-old suspect in custody

Roseville police say a homicide suspect is in custody after a shelter-in-place order was broadly issued Tuesday morning.

According to Roseville Police Chief Erika Scheider, who spoke during a news conference Tuesday afternoon, police responded to the 1100 block of Ryan Avenue at about 10:23 a.m. on a report of an assault in progress.

Upon arrival, officers found one person they pronounced dead at the scene, as well as two people with serious injuries and two people with minor injuries. The suspect, later described as a 17-year-old male, had left the scene by the time officers arrived.

Scheider said a preliminary investigation revealed the suspect, the person found dead, and the four people found injured are all family members.

Scheider said an individual who received the original emergency alert contacted police to report seeing the suspect near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Police were then able to take the suspect into custody.

The city of Roseville then canceled the shelter-in-place order Tuesday after arresting the homicide suspect.

Roseville residents were initially asked to shelter in place as police searched for the suspect Tuesday morning. Ramsey County officials sent information out on social media regarding the original shelter-in-place order. Those along Larpenteur Avenue to Highway 36 as well as Victoria Street to Snelling Avenue were asked to shelter in place amid the active situation.

**Shelter in place update**
The shelter in place warning was sent to a broader area than intended. Everyone in the following portions of the city of @RosevilleMN should shelter in place at this time:
-Larpenteur Avenue to Highway 36.
-Victoria Street to Snelling Avenue.

— RamseyCounty (@RamseyCounty) October 25, 2022

An emergency alert was sent to phones, and Scheider acknowledged the alert was sent out more broadly than originally intended; the alert was intended for the immediate neighborhood in Roseville.

Several metro area agencies—including Minneapolis, St. Paul, Mendota Heights, Mounds View, New Brighton, South St. Paul, West St. Paul, Centennial Lakes and White Bear Lake police and Washington County Sheriff’s Office—issued updates on their social media accounts to indicate the alert did not apply to their jurisdictions.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Ramsey County said staff members programmed the alert to be sent only to the area from Larpenteur Avenue to Highway 36 and Victoria Street to Snelling Avenue as planned and the alert ended up going to a much broader area “for reasons not known at this time.”

“Ramsey County is actively reviewing this incident with our staff and state and federal partners to identify why the alert went out to such an excessively broad area,” the county’s statement said. “Wireless emergency alerts should only be delivered to mobile devices connected to towers with a coverage area that overlaps the alert area.

“Ramsey County deeply apologizes for the confusion and disruption this morning’s alerts caused throughout the metro region. Ramsey County will continue to investigate this issue in the days ahead to identify the cause of the issue and prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future.”

One person who was not supposed to get the alert was Hillary Doyle who was working in downtown St. Paul at the time.

“Everyone was very concerned, because it just literally said, there’s a suspect of murder around,” Doyle said about the lack of details in the first alert.

Doyle, who is a relative of a 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS employee, said her company went into lock down for about 20 minutes.

“Just a very tense [20 minutes] that feels like a very long time, when it didn’t really have to be that way,” Doyle added. “Someone could have been a little bit more specific, maybe or just not sent that up quite as quickly.”

“This really did affect people and their mental health, which has been not good for the last couple of years — you really [have to] get those things right, as best you can, and as quickly as you can,” Doyle said.

The investigation remains ongoing; Scheider said police are working to determine a motive as well as whether there were calls for service made to the address in the past.