Ramsey County has agreed to pay $3.6 million to settle a family’s lawsuit after a 37-year-old man with hemophilia died following his 2022 arrest in St. Paul.

The lawsuit alleged that the county and four correctional officers violated Dillon Dean Bakke’s right to adequate medical treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit was brought by the law firm Meshbesher and Student P.A. on behalf of Bakke’s mother, Teresa Marie Schnell of St. Paul.

According to court documents, Bakke, a graphic designer, caregiver at a long-term care facility and severe hemophiliac, was arrested by St. Paul police officers on suspicion of drug possession and taken to Ramsey County jail on Aug. 7, 2022.

When he was booked, he had a laceration on his forehead and extensive bruising on his body. Court documents allege that jail staff was aware Bakke suffered from hemophilia and needed prescription clotting medication at any signs of bodily injuries.

Despite this, attorneys alleged, he did not receive the medication or any medical treatment.

“The lawsuit alleges that during Dillon’s three-day detainment at the jail, he suffered a medical emergency, specifically a brain bleed with corresponding serious and obvious neurological symptoms,” the law firm said in announcing the settlement.

Bakke’s condition was ignored and he was denied medical treatment for 30 hours, the firm said.

“On the morning he was to be released from custody, jail staff found him unresponsive on the floor of his cell. Dillon was transported to Regions Hospital where, despite the heroic efforts of his doctors and nurses, he never regained consciousness and tragically passed away on August 27,” the attorneys said.

Bakke began displaying neurological signs and symptoms on Aug. 7 and “began vocally and continually complaining about severe pain,” the lawsuit says. His condition deteriorated overnight and into the early morning hours of Aug. 8, “at which point he was unable to stand or walk, and was yelling out in pain and yelling for his mother.”

According to the lawsuit, correctional officers Xue Yang, Alex Grundhofer, Scott Brommerich and Antonio Rulli went to Bakke’s jail cell, handcuffed him and carried him to a cell in the segregation unit, where they laid him down and left without reporting his condition to medical personnel or requesting medical treatment.

County response

In response to the settlement, a spokesman for Ramsey County said that the correctional staff notified medical personnel about Bakke’s condition on “multiple occasions” during this time in custody.

The county’s public health staff oversees all medical care in the jail, Ramsey County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Linders said.

“Public Health staff working in the Adult Detention Center are not supervised by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office. Their training, supervision and medical decisions are the responsibility of Public Health leadership,” he said. “During Dillion Bakke’s time in custody, correctional staff promptly notified medical personnel on multiple occasions.”

Linders said that each time medical personnel were notified, Bakke’s condition was assessed by public health staff.

“Our sympathies are with Mr. Bakke’s family,” he said. “Everyone deserves competent medical care in jail.”

The settlement is one of the largest of its kind in Minnesota, according to Meshbesher and Student.

The lawsuit in Bakke’s death followed a $3 million settlement in June 2023 involving another alleged case of inmate mistreatment and medical neglect at the Ramsey County jail. In that case, a woman said correctional officers tackled her to the ground when she was handcuffed with her arms behind her back. Her tibia was fractured and an artery was severed, but she wasn’t taken for medical treatment for 17 hours, according to her lawsuit.

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Davion Brown’s murder by 16-year-old Knyaw Taw was a “chilling execution in the middle of the day,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Nori Wieder said in court Friday.

Knyaw Taw, of St. Paul, got off his bike and walked “coolly, calmly” up to Brown and other men who were standing outside a tobacco store on St. Paul’s Greater East Side around 12:30 p.m. Sept. 10, Wieder said at the teen’s sentencing.

Knyaw Taw pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun from his waistband and repeatedly fired at Brown, whose back was turned, hitting the 22-year-old six times at close range.

“A targeted attack, Your Honor,” Wieder told Ramsey County District Judge Jacob Kraus. “It doesn’t appear that Davion even knew he was there.”

Knyaw Taw, who turned 17 in December, was charged in juvenile court with second-degree murder three days after the killing. He waived certification into adult court on March 12 and pleaded guilty to the charge. He faced between 21¾ and 23½ years in prison under state sentencing guidelines.

Kraus gave him a 23-year prison term.

“This case is so sad,” Kraus said before handing down the sentence. “A young man who I never got the pleasure to meet lost his life, and a young man sitting in front of the court going to prison for decades, no matter what number I choose today.”

Court documents do not give a motive for the shooting “and we never have been explained why Davion was killed that day and why he chose Davion as his victim,” Wieder told the court.

He left on his bike

Officers sent to Maryland Tobacco at 1375 Maryland Ave. found Brown lying in the store with multiple gunshot wounds. Medics started transport to Regions Hospital, but Brown, of St. Paul, was pronounced dead in the ambulance.

Davion Brown (Courtesy photo)

Officers reviewed area surveillance video, which captured the shooting. Knyaw Taw, wearing a black face mask, a maroon Nike T-shirt and blue jeans, pulled up to the area on a bike. He got off the bike and walked toward a red Ford Expedition SUV parked in the lot. “It appears as if the occupant(s) of the Ford Expedition and the suspect exchanged words,” the charges say.

Knyaw Taw went back to his bike, walked up to Brown and two others in front of the store and shot Brown repeatedly. He got back on his bike and left.

Officers canvassed the area and were notified by a resident that a male matching the suspect’s description was walking south on Germain Street from Idaho Avenue East. A Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy saw Knyaw Taw walking south on Germain Street at Sherwood Avenue, and he ran, cutting across the front yard of a home in the 1500 block of Cottage Avenue East. He appeared to be holding something in the waistband of his jeans.

Officers chased him into a backyard, then lost sight of him. He was seen in the backyard of a home in the 1500 block of Clear Avenue East and taken into custody. A black face mask and handgun were found in the area.

In an interview with police, Knyaw Taw gave false identification information. Investigators used a database that searches for known fingerprints to identify him.

‘You took my baby’

Knyaw Taw, of St. Paul, had been arrested several times in Ramsey County for nonviolent crimes and was wanted on an active Ramsey County warrant at the time of shooting, prosecutor Wieder noted Friday in court.

Knyaw Taw’s attorney, public defender Erik Sandvick, said trauma and addiction were “everywhere in his life since he was born.” He was born in a refugee camp in Laos and came to the United States at age 6 with his parents. His parents separated after his dad was incarcerated and his mom moved to Georgia, Sandvick said, adding “he was left in the care of his paternal grandparents.”

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Knyaw Taw was “basically living on the streets and using a wide variety of drugs” in the year prior to the shooting, Sandvick said. “This isn’t an excuse for what happened, but it does give us some context on what was going on.”

When it came time to address the court, Knyaw Taw gave a one sentence apology, saying: “I’m sorry for what I did.”

Earlier, Brown’s mother, Kilolo Claiborne, told the teen she does not forgive him.

“You took my baby,” she said. “You took a father. You took a brother, an uncle, someone that was so precious to our family.”

She called Knyaw Taw a “young boy … who didn’t even know my child. He wasn’t out there bothering nobody. He didn’t bother you. And you still took his life. And for what?”

By CLAIRE SAVAGE, Associated Press

The federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights is classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority, essentially putting them on indefinite hold, according to two agency employees.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a meeting on Wednesday clarifying how it would treat new worker complaints of gender-identity discrimination in view of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes — male and female.

Staff who handle incoming charges, or intakes, were directed to code them as “C,” the lowest categorization in the EEOC’s system that is usually reserved for meritless charges, according to the agency employees who attended the Microsoft Teams meeting for intake supervisors, district directors and support staff that was led by the EEOC’s national intake coordinator. The employees asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to reveal the meeting details.

An EEOC spokesman declined to comment on the meeting, saying that “per federal law, we cannot discuss investigatory practices.”

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The decision is the latest step by the EEOC to back away from defending the rights of transgender and nonbinary workers in a major shift in civil rights enforcement under the Trump administration. In February, the EEOC moved to drop seven of its own pending lawsuits alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary people.

EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas, a Republican, has said one of her priorities will be implementing Trump’s executive order on gender and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights.” She had previously ordered that any worker discrimination charge that “implicates” Trump’s executive order on gender should be elevated to headquarters for review.

This latest decision to bury gender identity-related complaints leaves transgender and nonbinary people experiencing discrimination at work with limited recourse. U.S. workers must file discrimination complaints through the EEOC in most cases before they can seek other legal avenues.

Giving gender identity-related cases the lowest priority essentially pre-determines that they are meritless, said Chai Feldblum, who was an EEOC commissioner from 2010-2019.

“If they say they are bringing it to a central location to give them due consideration, they at least have the facade of doing something,” Feldblum said of Lucas’ previous directive on gender identity cases. “If they are sweeping them out the door as “C” charges, they are not doing their job.”

The EEOC has said that it will still issue “right to sue” notices in gender-identity related cases upon request, meaning workers can decide to pursue a lawsuit on their own. The agency will also honor requests for mediation, according to the employees who attended Wednesday’s meeting. But if mediation fails, the EEOC will take no further action on the case, the employees said.

The EEOC’s new approach to gender-identity related discrimination has raised a debate over whether the agency is acting in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, a landmark case that established that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination based on gender identity.

Civil rights activists have accused the EEOC of illegally defying the Supreme Court and abdicating its duty to enforce anti-discrimination laws by abandoning gender-identity related lawsuits. Lucas has previously told The AP that the EEOC has a duty to comply with Trump’s executive orders but she has not directly addressed the criticism that the agency’s handling of gender-identity cases are in tension with the Supreme Court.

The EEOC in fiscal year 2024 received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and 3,000-plus in 2023, according to the agency’s website.

Associated Press business reporter Alexandra Olson contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By MEG KINNARD, Associated Press

There was the pool furniture in the background. There were the tropical drinks, which looked to be margaritas garnished with cherries. And then there were the deported prisoner and the American senator, sitting and chatting.

That senator, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, accused El Salvador’s government on Friday of aiming to paint the picture of a leisurely respite for the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia by staging their meeting with drinks appearing to be alcohol, and angling to set the meeting by a hotel pool.

Van Hollen referred to the stagecraft with a term that had ricocheted around social media for much of the day: “Margaritagate.”

“Nobody drank any margaritas or sugar water or whatever it is,” the Democratic senator said, calling the whole situation “a lesson” in “the lengths that President Bukele will do to deceive people about what’s going on.”

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A Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.

U.S. President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said this week that they have no basis to return him to the United States, even as the Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake and the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return.

During a news conference Friday at Dulles International Airport, just after returning from El Salvador, the Maryland Democrat said Bukele is aiming to “deceive” people about what happened during his meeting with Abrego Garcia, in part by posting a photo with drinks appearing to be alcohol.

When he and Abrego Garcia first sat down for a meeting at the hotel where Van Hollen had been staying, the senator said, they “just had glasses of water on the table, maybe some coffee.”

Subsequently, Van Hollen said, “one of the government people” on the sidelines of their half-hour meeting deposited other beverages on the table, with salt or sugar around the top — “but they look like margaritas.”

On X Thursday night, Bukele posted photos of Van Hollen seated with Abrego Garcia, including with the drinks, garnished with maraschino cherries.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” Bukele wrote, adding an emoji of a tropical drink.

Van Hollen also noted that the Bukele government had initially proposed that he and Abrego Garcia conduct their meeting poolside at the hotel, rather than in the restaurant setting where they convened.

“They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar,” Van Hollen said.

In Friday’s news conference, Van Hollen also revealed that Abrego Garcia told him that he was no longer being held at the high-security Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where he and others were initially taken upon leaving the U.S. Van Hollen said he was initially denied entry to the facility but surmised Friday that had been because Abrego Garcia had already been moved from there to a detention center with better conditions.

“They decided that it was not a good look to continue to detain Abrego Garcia without anybody having access to him,” Van Hollen said. He added that Abrego Garcia told him he had not had contact with anyone outside prison at all since he was removed from the United States.

It was unclear where Abrego Garcia was taken after the meeting with Van Hollen.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, wiped away tears as Van Hollen spoke of her husband’s comments about wanting to speak with his wife. She did not speak during the news conference.

Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP