A group home worker admitted to police that he slept while a vulnerable man he was supposed to be caring for stepped out into dangerously cold weather and died in a North St. Paul street last week, according to a criminal complaint.
Abiodun Olalekan Onakoya, 29, of Champlin, is charged in Ramsey County District Court with felony criminal neglect in connection with the Jan. 27 incident at the group home in the 2700 block of McKnight Road North in North St. Paul.
According to Thursday’s complaint:
A North St. Paul police officer on routine patrol saw a naked person lying face down in the street at the intersection of 17th Avenue East and Second Street North about 4:24 a.m. Medics arrived and pronounced the 44-year-old dead; autopsy results are pending.
(Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Temperatures were well below freezing during the early morning hours, the complaint said.
Officers checked the group home and discovered the man was a vulnerable adult who lived at the residence, which is about four blocks north of where he was found.
Officers were told Onakoya was the staff member assigned to the man’s one-on-one care.
A staff member told police that he wasn’t aware the man was missing until police arrived. He said he found the man’s bedroom door open, so he looked inside and saw he wasn’t there. He looked for Onakoya, who was responsible for the man, and found Onakoya sleeping in a spare bedroom of the residence with the lights off and the door closed, the complaint said.
Police discovered from group home records that the man had left his room in recent days. On Jan. 19, eight days before his death, he left his room naked and ran back to his room when confronted by staff. The next day, he left his room naked three times between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Three days after that, he disrobed and attempted to run out of the house through the garage, but was stopped by staff arriving for shift change, the complaint said.
Police believe the man also went through the home’s garage the night he died. When they arrived, the garage door was open and “staff members were by the main entrance and exit and would have noticed (the man) attempting to leave,” the complaint read. “There were no footprints in the snow outside of (the man’s) windows.”
Police reviewed camera footage from a home located near where the man was found. It showed he walked past the camera on the sidewalk on westbound 17th Avenue at 3:22 a.m., just under an hour before he was found. “He was walking normally and did not appear to be injured,” the complaint read.
Onakoya, in an interview with police, admitted that he was sleeping in a downstairs bedroom off the living room. He said that he knows he is not supposed to sleep while at work and that “he never thought this would happen,” the complaint read.
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Onakoya’s signed work agreement states that he was not allowed to sleep at any time while at work, the complaint said.
Onakoya went before a judge on the charge and was granted conditional release from jail ahead of a next hearing scheduled for April 14. An attorney for Onakoya was not listed in his court file.
State records show the Department of Human Services temporarily suspended the license for the group home on Friday, pending further investigation. A message left Monday for the license holder, Pathways to Community, based in St. Paul, seeking comment on the suspension and the criminal case against Onakoya was not immediately returned.



