Feature Story

Three Burnsville (MN) First Responders Join Toll of Domestic Violence

By Jennifer Brooks, Star Tribune

02/20/2024

They came to help.

Police and paramedics. The first responders of Burnsville. The people who answer the call in the middle of the night about a man with a gun, barricaded in a house full of children.

Officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge. Firefighter Adam Finseth. They came to help, and it cost them everything.

After an hourslong standoff early Sunday, gunfire erupted from the house in Burnsville, killing Elmstrand and Ruge, who were both 27. Finseth, a 40-year-old Fire Department paramedic, was killed while trying to help the downed officers. A third officer was shot and injured.

They are the second, third and fourth Minnesotans killed by domestic violence this year. The first was Sandra Wilson Goertz, 81, of Lake Benton, victim of an apparent murder-suicide on Jan. 4.

We lose so many of our neighbors to domestic violence. Their names and stories blur and fade, replaced by the next horror story and the next.

On Feb. 1, Violence Free Minnesota reminded us of the 39 lives lost to intimate partner violence last year. It was the highest death toll the group had ever recorded in a single year.

They reminded us of the bright life and big smile of Kyla O'Neal, who was nine months pregnant when she was gunned down in the parking lot at work in January 2023 by her ex-fiancé. Her baby son, Messiah O'Neal, was delivered by cesarean but died nine days later.

Remember Madeline Kingsbury, 26, of Winona, strangled to death in front of her children. It took 10 weeks to discover where her killer hid her body. Remember Don-Shay Hardy, 38, of St. Paul, who was styling her child's hair in the bathroom when her husband burst in with a gun.

Betty Jo Bowman, 32, of Rochester, whose husband, a doctor, stands accused of her murder by poison. Manijeh Starren, 33, killed and dismembered in her St. Paul apartment. Her boyfriend, the chief suspect, has also been linked to another woman's disappearance. Savannah Ryan Williams, 38, was gunned down on a Minneapolis sidewalk.

They remembered the helpers. The ones who stepped between an abuser and victim and paid the price.

Antonio Moore, 37, stabbed to death last May while protecting his sister from an abusive ex.

Pope County Sheriff's Deputy Joshua Owen, 44, shot and killed last April while responding to a domestic disturbance call in Cyrus. Two other officers were shot and injured.

In the past decade, domestic violence has taken the lives of at least 250 Minnesotans — including four members of law enforcement who were responding to calls for help, said Joe Shannon, communications program manager for Violence Free Minnesota. The group remembers them, along with all the others who tried to intervene, as well as bystanders like Marquisha "Kiki" Wiley, who was killed when a domestic violence dispute erupted into a mass shooting in a St. Paul bar in 2021.

"We believe that it's critical to include bystanders, because without that domestic violence present, these people would still be alive," Shannon said.

It's a reminder of the toll domestic violence takes on the whole community. Sunday's tragedy shattered three families forever. It caused incalculable trauma to the woman and seven young children who were trapped in the house during the standoff and to the officer still recovering from his wounds. It broke Burnsville's heart.

"I think about the children. The neighbors, locked down in their homes," Shannon said. "Domestic violence is not just an issue between people in the relationship. It extends so far past that."

If you're in danger from an intimate partner, or trying to help someone else, you can call Minnesota's Day One Hotline, toll-free at 866-223-1111 or text 612-399-9995.