A case against a man charged with raping a woman at knifepoint five years ago in St. Paul was recently dismissed due to his mental illness and indeterminate civil commitment, according to court records.

Avery Darius Oliphant, 27, faced first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Ramsey County District Court after prosecutors said he raped a 40-year-old woman he’d just met on the Green Line light-rail train the morning of July 9, 2019.

Avery Darius Oliphant (Courtesy of the Ramsey County sheriff’s office)

Oliphant is under a civil commitment at Minnesota State Security Hospital in St. Peter with no time limit after being found mentally ill and dangerous to the public last year.

Oliphant was first deemed incompetent to stand trial on the charge in May 2021 due to mental illness. After a series of evaluations, his criminal case was dismissed in August by the court pursuant to state law involving competency proceedings.

The law states that criminal charges — with the exception of murder — must be dismissed three years after an incompetency finding unless the prosecutor files a written notice of intent to prosecute once the defendant regains competency.

An intent to prosecute was not filed by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, which spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein said this week is typical in cases where the person is found to be mentally ill and dangerous and there is an indeterminate civil commitment ordered by the court.

Arrested five weeks later

The criminal complaint said Oliphant invited the woman to smoke marijuana and so they got off the train around 6:30 a.m. and went to an industrial area off University Avenue. He asked her if she would have sex with him and she told him no. Oliphant pulled out a knife and proceeded to rape her.

At some point, she tried to run and started screaming for help, but Oliphant caught up with her and hit her in the face and choked her, the complaint said.

She said he forced her at knifepoint to go inside a Subway to clean herself up. The store was closed at the time, but its door was open. She went into the bathroom, where she texted her boyfriend to alert him to the assault, but Oliphant busted inside and forced her to strip down so he could rape her a second time, the complaint said.

She saw another chance to escape and ran out of the bathroom naked and screaming, which surveillance footage from inside Subway showed.

Officers were able to pull a photo of the suspect from the footage, and circulated it among area law enforcement. Oliphant, of Minneapolis, was arrested by police five weeks later, on Aug. 16, along University Avenue in St. Paul.

The victim identified him in a six-person line-up, the complaint said. He denied involvement in the attack.

Oliphant’s criminal record includes convictions for first-degree attempted robbery in 2016, interference with an emergency call in 2017 and theft in 2018.

‘Dangerousness to the public’

An order committing Oliphant as mentally ill was issued by the court in June 2021 and additional extensions and a recommitment followed.

A petition to commit him as mentally ill and dangerous was filed in April 2022. After a two-phase hearing that included testimony from psychiatric doctors who had evaluated Oliphant, the court civilly committed him in September 2023 for an indefinite period of time.

In his order, Ramsey County District Judge Timothy Mulrooney noted that Oliphant said he was “cured” and “continues to lack insight into his mental illness.”

“As a result, he remains likely to be noncompliant with medications and continue with violent conduct if discharged into the community,” Mulrooney wrote. “Indeed, all three experts on this case have urged (Oliphant) be retained within the secure State Psychiatric Hospital at St. Peter for long-term treatment of mental illness and due to his dangerousness to the public.”

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Glamour has named St. Paul gymnast Suni Lee one of its women of the year, the online magazine announced Thursday.

“Being at the Olympics really made me fall back in love with the sport,” the 21-year-old said in a feature written by contributing editor Emily Tannenbaum.

Lee spoke to Tannenbaum about competing in the Olympics, her insecurities, her friendships and her battle with two undisclosed types of kidney disease. Lee also revealed a previously unknown fact about the latter.

“Nobody knows this, but the week before the Olympic trials, I had to get an infusion because I went into a relapse,” Lee said. It worked, as Lee not only made it to the Olympics, she helped Team USA take home the gold while picking up two bronze medals on her own.

Lee shared the story of her diagnosis. Last year, she was studying at Auburn University when she woke up one morning with a swollen face and body. During practice that day, she realized she couldn’t lift her own body: “It literally felt like I had an eight-pound vest on, and I was trying to chuck myself over the bar.”

A doctor told Lee it could be allergies, but Lee’s rapid weight gain made her realize it was much more serious. “I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I couldn’t bend my legs because they were so swollen, and my fingers too. My eyes were almost swollen shut. I was like, ‘Something is happening.’ ”

After trying every allergy medication on the market and finding no success, she talked to the USA Gymnastics’ co-head physician, who helped her get tested and diagnosed her with kidney disease. She moved home to St. Paul to recover.

Once she was well enough to start training again, she found it more difficult than expected. “Bars, floor, and vault were really hard for me because I couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs. My coaches would have buckets ready to go for when I needed to throw up because my medicine made me so nauseous,” she said.

After competing at the US Classic that August, her health took a downturn that led to her taking another six months off. In January, her condition had stabilized and she began training again, just seven months before the 2024 Paris Olympics. She did not say what type of infusion she received, but that it made a “world of a difference” and helped her to secure her spot on Team USA: “I was able to do everything that I was supposed to do.”

Personal tidbits

Suni Lee takes a moment to enjoy the cheers after she completed her floor routine at the United States Women’s Olympic Gymnastics trials finals at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Sunday, June 30, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Elsewhere in the Glamour story, Lee talked about mentoring 16-year-old Hezly Rivera (she told her teammate “You can laugh a little in the gym. It doesn’t have to be serious all the time.”), worrying that her fall during her beam routine on her final day at the Olympics would become a meme (she made one herself on TikTok: “I can make fun of myself because at the end of the day, it’s just a competition.”) and her recent move to New York City (“I don’t know anybody in New York. So yeah, I’m scared.”).

As for the 2028 Olympics, Lee wouldn’t commit, but said if she does, she doesn’t want it to be a big story. “I’d just want to work my butt off in the gym every single day and get everything that I deserved at the Olympics. You know? It shouldn’t be deeper than that,” she said.

Lee joins fellow Olympians Serena Williams and Allyson Felix, a quartet of famous moms (Tina Knowles, Donna Kelce, Maggie Baird and Mandy Teefey), a trio of actresses (Pamela Anderson, Taraji P. Henson and Sydney Sweeney) and a pair of abortion activists (Hadley Duvall, Kaitlyn Joshua) as Glamour’s women of the year.

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I discovered opera through “Gilligan’s Island.” In one particularly clever episode, a Broadway producer played by Phil Silvers washed ashore, and the castaways created a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” with tunes from “Carmen” and “The Tales of Hoffman.” I still smile when I hear an instrumental version of the “Habanera” from “Carmen” on the radio and start to sing, “I ask to be, or not to be. …”

There’s a similarly witty combination of highbrow literature and lowbrow comedy going on at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis right now. Theater Latte Da is presenting the local premiere of “Scotland, PA,” which takes Shakespeare’s tragedy of the power-hungry Macbeth and transports it to a fast-food joint in mid-1970s, small-town Pennsylvania.

Based upon Billy Morrissette’s 2001 film, the stage musical premiered in 2019 in New York before composer Adam Gwon and librettist Michael Mitnick asked to workshop a new version at Theater Latte Da’s “Next” festival of freshly minted musicals. The completed product has now hit the boards, and it’s a very entertaining take on this tale of greed and murder.

Packing 21 original pop tunes into two hours, “Scotland, PA” boasts impressive performances from each of the 11 cast members, all selling Gwon’s songs with infectious energy and enthusiasm and creating characters about as believable as this somewhat cartoonish take on the “Macbeth” story will allow.

In this adaptation, Mac and Pat are a couple working at Duncan’s, where business is slow, the manager is embezzling, and the owner is out to cut the workers’ pay. But Mac is an imaginative guy, given to brainstorming concepts that are now staples of the fast food world. Inspired by prophecies delivered by a trio of weed-huffing wanderers, the couple seeks to seize control of the business. But then they have to create alibis to cover their crimes, get rid of potential witnesses, and deal with all of the attendant guilt and paranoia.

Tara Borman, Will Dusek, Katherine Fried and Deidre Cochran in Theater Latte Da’s season-opening production of “Scotland, Pa.,” Adam Gwon and Michael Mitnick’s musical comedy adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” in which two ambitious employees at a burger restaurant plot a rise in the profession that comes to involve prophecies and murder. The show runs through Oct. 27, 2024 at the Minneapolis theater. (Dan Norman / Theater Latte Da)

The inevitable darkness is brightened considerably by Gwon’s combination of hard rock, gospel, old-fashioned show tunes, and histrionic pop ballads. You’re unlikely to walk out of the Ritz humming any of them — although “Clairvoyant” does the best imitation of an earworm and pokes fun at it with placards encouraging a sing-along and lighters held aloft — but they all drive the story forward, which is more than you can say for a lot of modern musicals. And the upstage five-piece band does a fine job with the stylistic twists.

Under the co-direction of Lonny Price and Matt Cowart — and featuring the silly but well-executed choreography of Lorin Latarro and Travis Waldschmidt — “Scotland, PA” might be the most enjoyable critique of capitalism you’ll experience all year. It helps to have a Pat (our Lady Macbeth) who can belt out a tune with the pop pipes of Katherine Fried. And Will Dusek continues his local theater rookie-of-the-year campaign with a conflicted, powerfully voiced Mac.

Lending extra spice is Emily Gunyou Halaas’ portrayal of no-nonsense detective Peg McDuff, keeping the energy and laughs coming while we all know that things are going south for our ambitious protagonists. And that’s a big part of this production’s success: We know how the story goes, but the fun is in the cleverness of the adaptation.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

Theater Latte Da’s ‘Scotland, PA’

When: Through Oct. 27
Where: Ritz Theater, 345 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis
Tickets: $86-$5, available at 612-339-3003 or latteda.org
Capsule: “Macbeth” as a musical comedy? Yep, and it’s pretty darn clever.

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By TOM KRISHER

DETROIT (AP) — The union representing 45,000 striking U.S. dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports has reached a deal to suspend their strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract, a person briefed on the matter says.

The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately at least until January said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement has yet to be signed.

The agreement will allow the union and the U.S Maritime Alliance, which represents the shippers and ports, time to negotiate a new six-year contract. The person also said both sides reached agreement on wage increases, but details weren’t available.

The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at the ports from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at 36 ports that handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.

The walkout raised the risk of shortages of goods on store shelves if it lasted more than a few weeks. But most retailers had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the work stoppage.