Just a few months after the National Collegiate Hockey Conference held its final neutral site postseason tournament at Xcel Energy Center, the hockey people in St. Paul got some good news about another major college tournament coming to town.

On Thursday, officials from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association announced that the 2026 WCHA Final Faceoff will be hosted by the University of St. Thomas and held at the new state-of-the-art Lee & Penny Anderson Arena. The four-team tournament, which crowns the postseason champion in the nation’s premiere women’s hockey conference, will be played on the St. Thomas campus March 5-7, 2026.

“We are excited for the best of the WCHA to be showcased at the brand-new state-of-the-art Lee & Penny Anderson Arena in 2026 on the University of St. Thomas campus,” said league commissioner Michelle McAteer, in a statement. “The staff from St. Thomas is committed to providing a first-class experience for our student-athletes and fans. The facility will soon be one of the most impressive in college hockey, and this event will help put it on the map.”

The four teams advancing to the tournament will be determined by a quartet of best-of-three series which begin on Feb. 27. The tournament winner receives the WCHA’s automatic bid into the 11-team NCAA women’s tournament.

This will be the first time hosting the tournament for St. Thomas, which is the newest member of the eight-team conference. Ridder Arena in Minneapolis has hosted the Final Faceoff 17 times, with Bloomington, Blaine, Duluth, Bemidji and Grand Forks, N.D., also hosting the tournament since the inaugural event in 2000.

Wisconsin won the 2025 WCHA tournament, beating the Gophers in Duluth on the way to the Badgers besting conference rival Ohio State in the NCAA title game.

A former Metro Transit worker is suing the Metropolitan Council, claiming religious discrimination and workplace retaliation drove him out of his job.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court alleges Jihad Hamoud, who is Muslim, left his job in 2022 after repeated questioning of his religious accommodations, discrimination based on his faith, and disciplinary measures from management after reporting problems.

It also claims management sent police with Hamoud to pray after repeatedly declining his requests to do so during a 2021 discipline meeting with management.

The Met Council can’t comment on ongoing litigation, spokesman John Schadl said in a statement. Metro Transit is just one service run by the regional planning organization.

The lawsuit comes after an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found probable cause that the Met Council violated state antidiscrimination law and retaliated against Hamoud.

The council appealed the November 2024 ruling, but Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero reaffirmed her decision in January this year.

Minneapolis law firm Storms Dworak brought the lawsuit on Hamoud’s behalf.

Hamoud had been an employee of the Met Council since 2010, when he was hired as a Metro Transit bus driver, according to court documents.

He transferred to a job cleaning and maintaining Metro Transit facilities in 2019. Work was based out of a central hub in St. Paul.

While in that position, Hamoud experienced multiple incidents of religious discrimination, the lawsuit claims.

In one incident detailed in the lawsuit, a supervisor blamed the bathrooms becoming dirty on Muslims “‘who pray in there and wet up the whole place and throw tissue and paper towels all over the place and get the toilets clogged.’” Hamoud told the supervisor Muslims must pray in clean settings, the lawsuit said.

In another incident, according to the lawsuit, a Met Council janitor told Hamoud that Muslims were creating problems and leading to a conflict with Christianity.

Problems continued, but when Hamoud met with managers to discuss his concerns about religious discrimination, he was placed on administrative leave, according to the lawsuit.

When Hamoud returned to work, a manager accused Hamoud of driving past him and the janitor to intimidate him, and later called Hamoud into a meeting with two police officers present, according to the lawsuit. The manager allegedly accused Hamoud of insubordination.

As they waited for a union representative, Hamoud asked to pray, which, as a practicing Muslim, he is required to do five times a day. The manager allegedly directed the two police officers to “keep an eye on” Hamoud while he prayed, causing him to, among other things, feel “degraded, humiliated, disrespected, vilified, and discriminated against.”

Hamoud was placed on a five-day suspension without pay and escorted off the premises. In a later meeting between Hamoud’s union and Met Council, the group’s assistant director of Facilities Maintenance said the situation was “blown out of proportion,” and “border[ed] on ridiculous,” the lawsuit claims.

Hamoud returned to work, but continued to experience discrimination and eventually resigned in May 2022.  He is seeking a total of $100,000 in damages and any other relief a court deems appropriate.

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St. Paul’s police chief on Thursday named a homicide investigator as Detective of the Year and a patrol officer who regularly recovers firearms and large amounts of drugs as Officer of the Year.

Sgt. Jennifer O’Donnell, a St. Paul officer of more than 30 years who works in the homicide/robbery unit, was the primary investigator on 156 homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults last year and assisted on more, according to her commendation. She was the primary investigator in the fatal shooting of Nicholas Sletten, 42, in the North End in October.

Murder charges were filed in January. “This was a complex investigation that required ongoing intensive work,” said O’Donnell’s commendation, which described her and her colleagues as working “tirelessly” on the case.

Chief Axel Henry named Abdirahman Dahir as 2024 Officer of the Year. He grew up in St. Paul, became a Police Explorer at age 14, and later a St. Paul parking enforcement officer before he joined the department’s police academy in 2021.

A patrol officer in the Western District, Dahir recovered 22 handguns, of which 3 were stolen and one a “ghost gun,” and several thousand fentanyl pills during 18 stops last year that were either traffic or investigative, his commendation said, adding that last year “was not an anomaly.” Dahir recovered 30 handguns the year before.

Richard Bertholf, who works in the police Video Management Unit, was recognized as Professional Employee of the Year.

When Andre L. Mitchell, 26, was shot and killed while two children were in his backseat in November, Bertholf “immediately responded to multiple urgent requests to gather nearby video that may have captured the shooting,” his commendation said. He found videos that showed four people shooting at Mitchell and two suspect vehicles, and gathered information about suspects. Four people have been charged in Mitchell’s murder.

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The crash that killed five young women in south Minneapolis nearly three years ago was not just an accident, bad luck or chance, the prosecution said Thursday in its closing argument in the trial of Derrick John Thompson.

It was murder in the third degree, Hennepin County prosecutor Paige Starkey told jurors, “because these five young women lost their lives as a direct consequence of the reckless, selfish, destructive choices of another driver.”

After five days of testimony, the jury received the case at 11:30 a.m. Thursday and began deliberations to decide whether the state had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Thompson — the 29-year-old son of a former St. Paul state representative — is guilty of five counts of third-degree murder and 10 counts of criminal vehicular homicide for allegedly operating a motor vehicle in a grossly negligent manner and leaving the scene of an accident.

The jury had not reached a verdict as of 4:30 p.m. and was sent home for the day. They will reconvene Friday.

Prosecutors say Thompson was driving 95 mph on Interstate 35W in a rented Cadillac Escalade SUV when he passed a Minnesota State Trooper, exited on Lake Street at 116 mph, and then ran a red light at Second Avenue, crashing into the victims’ Honda Civic just after 10 p.m. June 16, 2023.

Pronounced dead at the scene were Salma Mohamed Abdikadir, 20, of St. Louis Park; Sabiriin Mohamoud Ali, 17, of Bloomington; Sahra Liban Gesaade, 20, of Brooklyn Center; Sagal Burhaan Hersi, 19, of Minneapolis, and Siham Adan Odhowa, 19, of Minneapolis. They were returning from preparing for a friend’s wedding, which was to be the next day.

In September, prosecutors added the five counts of third-degree murder, which is defined in state statute as “perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.”

“Members of the jury, not every murder is calculated or considered,” Starkey said. “Not every murder is directed at a particular person or people.”

Tyler Bliss, Thompson’s attorney, tried to cast doubt during the trial that his client was the driver, despite jurors seeing surveillance video of him renting the Escalade from Hertz at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and then driving away. Bliss suggested his older brother, Damarco Thompson, was the driver that night, pointing to evidence that his hat and a set of car keys were found inside the crashed SUV.

In response, the state subpoenaed Damarco to take the stand. On Wednesday, he testified that he never drove the Escalade. He said the two of them drove a short distance from the airport, stopped and Derrick transferred some possessions from their Dodge Challenger into the Escalade, which his brother then drove away.

In his closing arguments Thursday, Bliss questioned the credibility of Demarco, who he said is a “person with one of the most strong motives to give self-serving testimony I’ve ever encountered in a case. Who on Earth would want to be associated with this situation?”

‘Choices that night were criminal’

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Paige Starkey gives the prosecution’s closing statement in Derrick John Thompson’s criminal trial. (Renée Jones Schneider / Pool via The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Early on in the state’s one-hour long closing argument, prosecutors reminded jurors of how Thompson acted after the crash by replaying police officer body-cam video of an interaction with Thompson.

“Do you know how long this is going to take?” he asked an officer while sitting in the back of a squad car, adding he had “things I do wanna get done on my Friday night, you know?”

Starkey went on to go through the video evidence in chronological order from that night, starting with Thompson at Hertz and the Escalade speeding past a state trooper parked under an I-35W overpass.

“Members of the jury, you make the decision,” Starkey said. “Has his driving conduct changed? Does it appear that he’s now going faster? … You can see the trooper behind him hasn’t gained a lot, because at this point, he’s got his foot down on the accelerator.”

Video showed the trooper wasn’t able to catch up or turn on the squad’s emergency lights or sirens before the speeding SUV turned off the interstate and narrowly missed cars. Then, the violent collision, which sent off a large plume of smoke.

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Paige Starkey, not seen, presents a video play-by-play of the evidence against Derrick John Thompson, second left, as she gives the prosecution’s closing argument. This is a photo displayed of the victims’ vehicle. (Renée Jones Schneider / Pool via The Minnesota Star Tribune)

“Derrick Thompson’s behavior, his series of choices that night were criminal,” Starkey said, “because they were eminently dangerous to everyone and anyone who happened to be on the road that night.”

Short video clips were replayed of Thompson crossing Lake Street and walking into a Taco Bell parking lot, where he “makes the decision basically to try to blend in,” Starkey said.

“Why are you bleeding?” an officer asks Thompson after he’s seen sitting on a parking lot curb with an injury to his face. He told officers it was an old injury, then said he had fallen at Lake Street and Fifth Avenue earlier in the night.

Another video clip showed what Starkey said was Thompson “struggling to turn and manipulate his body to even sit down in the back of the squad car.” He was taken to the hospital for treatment for a fracture on the right side of his hip, which Starkey said is “wholly consistent” with him slamming on the brake pedal before impact.

Starkey reminded jurors that the state’s first witness, Kanitra Walker, Thompson’s former girlfriend, testified that he had called her from the hospital and that he said he was driving.

Starkey pointed out that state troopers had testified the mangled Escalade’s passenger-side doors were stuck shut, casting doubt that Thompson was a passenger in the SUV.

Although Starkey acknowledge that a DNA mixture found on the inside driver’s door matched Derrick and Damarco, she added that brothers and family members share characteristics of DNA and also that transfer is possible with DNA.

“I want to be clear: There is no evidence in this case that more than one person was ever driving the Cadillac Escalade,” Starkey said. “No one saw another driver, there’s no video of another driver.”

Over the course of at least two minutes, Thompson made the criminally reckless choices “to drive the way he did both on and the interstate and off — and “that is indifference to human life,” Starkey said.

Not murder, defense says

Defense attorney Tyler Bliss gives a closing statement for his client, Derrick John Thompson, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. (Renée Jones Schneider / Pool via The Minnesota Star Tribune)

In the defense closing argument, Bliss said there is no evidence that Thompson knew he was being followed by the state trooper.

Thompson’s attorney said the driver who was “trying to jab on that brake” showed “regard for human life.”

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Driving at “great speeds” is recklessness and not a depraved act or acting with indifference to life, Bliss said.

“This is recklessness, realization of the mistake and an inability to resolve from that mistake,” he said. “Because of that, whoever’s driving this vehicle is not guilty of any of the murder charges here.”

Thompson’s father, John Thompson, was a first-term lawmaker representing St. Paul’s East Side when he was defeated in the DFL primary in August 2022 in the wake of a number of controversies, which included questions about his official residence following a July 2021 traffic stop in St. Paul.

In November, Thompson turned down a plea offer from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office that called for a prison term between 32½ and nearly 39 years for pleading guilty to five counts of criminal vehicular homicide.