Prosecutors charged a former St. Paul police officer Thursday with arson at the building that houses his wife’s St. Paul restaurant.
Law enforcement reviewed video from several cameras and saw a person, later identified as 55-year-old Tou Mo Cha, exiting Checker Board Pizza and then repeatedly entering the apartment entry to the building in Payne-Phalen, according to a criminal complaint. Cha walked away and the apartment entry started on fire.
When Cha was a St. Paul police officer, he was charged in 2004 with lending his department-issued handgun. The gun was used in a pair of drive-by shootings that targeted members of the Hmong community; no one was injured. Cha pleaded guilty to making terroristic threats in 2005 and resigned from the police force.
Reached by phone on Friday, Cha said he was unaware he’d been charged in the fire and said he was surprised.
“I had no intention or anything to do with it,” Cha said. “… I had no knowledge, I had no desire, I had no motivation to do anything like that. That’s my only income, my only job.”
The business remains closed — there was smoke damage “upstairs somewhere,” Cha said. The bar and upstairs portion of the building had been undergoing renovations for years, Cha said, adding that he still opened the kitchen for takeout and delivery before the fire.
Property records indicate the building at 992 Arcade St. is not owned by Cha or his wife.
The business, owned by Cha’s wife, has also been called Checkerbar Food & Liquor. She voluntarily relinquished the last city licenses at the location in 2020, according to St. Paul’s Department of Safety and Inspections. The business had a license for food service from the Minnesota Department of Health.
Arson charge: Fire started at apartment entryway
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Cha, of Little Canada, with second-degree arson of a building. Prosecutors gave the following information in a complaint:
Tou Mo Cha in a 2019 mugshot. (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
On Aug. 9, there was a fire at 990 Arcade St., a convenience store, and subsequently across Jenks Street at the building that houses Checker Board Pizza. That fire was at 1:25 p.m.
Video from the area showed Cha’s wife coming out of Checker Board Pizza and going to their vehicle. Cha went between the pizza shop and the doorway of the apartment, and the fire started a few minutes after he drove away.
Cha told police he had not gone to the apartment entryway where the fire started, “however, the video shows him to be there,” the complaint said.
Fire examiners concluded the fire began in the entry staircase of the apartment portion of the building. It was possibly ignited with gasoline.
The fire caused extensive damage to the building, costting more than $100,000.
Cha’s first court date wasn’t listed in court records as of Friday.
Past cases connected to bar
Cha was sentenced in 2019 to 90 days in jail for his involvement in an assault outside Checker Board Pizza the year before. The case was at the center of an incident that resulted in the firing of five St. Paul police officers.
Cha admitted in court to hitting a man he described as his wife’s nephew in the head with a club outside Checker Board Pizza. The man was hospitalized and needed 24 staples to close the gash in his head.
The police department said five officers failed to intervene and lied about what happened, leading to then-St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell firing them.
Before that case, police had received reports about Checker Board Pizza.
In 2014, 34-year-old Nicholas James Keilen died a couple of months after he said bouncers assaulted him outside the bar and restaurant. The Ramsey County medical examiner’s office ruled the manner of Keilen’s death as undetermined, and no one was arrested or charged.
Other men told police in 2011 and 2014 that security guards assaulted them. And in 2013, a group of people reported to police that Cha had pepper-sprayed them. No bar employees were charged in those cases.
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