Could Be Worse

After writer and performer Elizabeth Young-Collins’ show at last year’s Minnesota Fringe, she said she wanted to come back with a comedy. She delivers with “A History Tour Hijacked,” a two-person show featuring Young-Collins and a bus driver leading a Washington, D.C., tour. Young-Collins engages the audience to join in singing and shouting out answers to history facts. She seems earnest and has a beautiful voice, and the plot twist gets to the show’s deeper meaning of following your dreams. Check out the show if you’re nearby, but it lacks the “wow” factor to justify a cross-town drive or the admission price for a family.

Presented by Elizabeth Young at the Strike Theater; 5:30 p.m. Aug. 3, 7 p.m. Aug. 6, 10 p.m. Aug. 7, 4 p.m. Aug. 10.

Still trying to decide what to see? Check out all our Fringe reviews at twincities.com/tag/fringe-festival, with each show rated on a scale of Must See, Worth Considering, Could Be Worse or You Can Skip.

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is presenting more than 100 hourlong stage acts from Aug. 1–11 around Minneapolis. Visit MinnesotaFringe.org for ticket and show information.

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A man was sentenced Friday to three years of probation and ordered to pay restitution for breaking into Vadnais Heights motorsports dealership on Christmas morning and taking an all-terrain vehicle on a rampage that caused nearly $300,000 in damages.

Austin Michael Erickson (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Video surveillance from Tousley Motorsports shows Austin Michael Erickson crashing a Polaris all-terrain utility vehicle into motorcycles, snowmobiles, ATVs and other merchandise. He then plowed through two overhead garage doors on his way out, barely missing a Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy who had arrived on scene on a report of a glass break alarm just before 6:30 a.m. Dec. 25.

Deputies caught up with Erickson after he ran from the vehicle toward a wooded area. He was wearing a Tousley jacket and a red helmet that he also stole from the business.

Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher sentenced Erickson, 31, of Little Canada, under terms of a plea deal he reached with prosecution in June.

In exchange for pleading guilty to first-degree criminal damage to property, two other felony charges — second-degree burglary and motor vehicle theft — were dismissed. A one-year prison term was stayed for three years, during which time Erickson will be on supervised probation, and he was given 221 days in jail — time that he has already served. He remained at the Ramsey County jail on Friday involving a separate 2023 case.

Bartscher ordered Erickson to pay Tousley Motorsports restitution in the amount of $94,707.86, which represents damages not covered by its insurance and deductibles for the building and wrecked vehicles.

“Mr. Erickson chose my business at random to attack and destroy,” Tousley Motorsports owner and president David Glassman said in a statement read in court by his attorney, Michael Vetter.

According to Glassman, Erickson caused $10,299.37 in damage to customer vehicles; $63,933.15 in damage to inventory; a “staggering” $169,313.10 in damage to the building and property; and nearly $40,000 in income the business missed out on while being closed for a day to clean up the mess.

“The money is only one part of the issue that was caused by Mr. Erickson’s actions,” the statement read. “This all took place on Christmas. My employees volunteered to come in to try to get the place boarded up and the lot secured. They did this at the expense of their families.”

In a phone interview after the sentencing hearing, Glassman said restitution is the “minimum that (Erickson) should have to do.”

Glassman said he is “extremely disappointed” that Erickson was given the opportunity to make a plea deal. “And then … it’s just probation and time served,” he said from Las Vegas, where he’s attending a Polaris dealer meeting. “You know, so what kind of message does that send to everybody else? Not a very good one.”

The break-in

After his arrest, Erickson told deputies in an interview that he had contacted a friend from high school and agreed to meet him at Tousley Motorsports, which is along County Road E, west of U.S. 61. “They did dope,” walked to Tousley and climbed the fence, the criminal complaint said of what Erickson told deputies.

Erickson said he used a trailer hitch to break glass to get inside, and he relayed information to his friend who was “outside scouting and watching.” Deputies did not find another person on the scene.

At the time, Erickson had three ongoing Ramsey County court cases filed in 2023 that he was out on bond for — motor vehicle theft, threats of violence and second-degree assault. The cases remain open.

In a Dec. 27 hearing on the Tousley charges, prosecutors asked Ramsey County District Judge Paul Yang to set Erickson’s bail at $200,000; Yang set it at $5,000 bail or bond with no conditions or $500 cash bail with conditions.

That prompted Glassman to send out a statement to the media in which he called the $500 bond a “joke” and added, “To say we are shocked is an understatement.”

Glassman mentioned then how Erickson has an extensive criminal history and added, ”Had he been properly prosecuted for his past crimes, he wouldn’t have been able to commit the multiple felonies on Christmas which were all eyewitnessed by our surveillance cameras and law enforcement on site.”

Erickson’s criminal history includes two convictions for marijuana possession in 2017 and four others from that same year: fleeing police, tampering with a motor vehicle, disorderly conduct and violating a no-contact order. In January 2023, he was cited by the Forest Lake city attorney for possession of drug paraphernalia and improper transport of a firearm (a shotgun) after being stopped on an interstate for going 94 mph in a 70 mph zone.

Court records also show that Erickson on Oct. 24 pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a firearm by an ineligible person stemming from the second-degree assault case in which he allegedly pointed a gun at his ex-girlfriend on Feb. 6 in North St. Paul.

Under terms of a plea deal, the assault charge would have been dismissed at sentencing along with two other 2023 cases. Erickson posted bond the same day he entered the plea and was released from custody, with an order to appear for sentencing on Jan. 19. His new sentencing date is scheduled for Oct. 21.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday overrode a plea agreement reached earlier this week for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases.

The move comes two days after the military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announced that the official appointed to oversee the war court, retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, had approved plea deals with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two accused accomplices, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, in the attacks.

Letters sent to families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the al-Qaida attacks said the plea agreement stipulated the three would serve life sentences at most.

Austin wrote in an order released Friday night that “in light of the significance of the decision,” he had decided that the authority to make a decision on accepting the plea agreements was his. He nullified Escallier’s approval.

Some families of the attack’s victims condemned the deal for cutting off any possibility of full trials and possible death penalties. Republicans were quick to fault the Biden administration for the deal, although the White House said after it was announced it had no knowledge of it.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a member of the Armed Services Committee, earlier Friday had condemned the plea deal on social media as “disgraceful.” Cotton said he had introduced legislation that would mandate the 9/11 defendants face trial and the possibility of the death penalty.

Mohammed, whom the U.S. describes as the main plotter of the attack that crashed hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, and the other two defendants had been expected to formally enter their pleas under the deal as soon as next week.

The U.S. military commission overseeing the cases of five defendants in the Sept. 11 attacks has been stuck in pre-trial hearings and other preliminary court action since 2008. The torture that the defendants underwent while in CIA custody has been among the challenges slowing the cases, and left the prospect of full trials and verdicts still uncertain, in part because of the inadmissibility of evidence linked to the torture.

J. Wells Dixon, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented defendants at Guantanamo as well as other detainees there who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, had welcomed the plea bargains as the only feasible way to resolve the long-stalled and legally fraught 9/11 cases.

Dixon accused Austin on Friday of “bowing to political pressure and pushing some victim family members over an emotional cliff” by rescinding the plea deals.

Lawyers for the two sides have been exploring a negotiated resolution to the case for about 1 1/2 years. President Joe Biden blocked an earlier proposed plea bargain in the case last year, when he refused to offer requested presidential guarantees that the men would be spared solitary confinement and provided trauma care for the torture they underwent while in CIA custody.

A fourth Sept. 11 defendant at Guantanamo had been still negotiating on a possible plea agreement.

The military commission last year ruled the fifth defendant mentally unfit to stand trial. A military medical panel cited post-traumatic stress disorder and psychosis, and linked it to torture and solitary confinement in four years in CIA custody before transfer to Guantanamo.

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Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed.

The Twins didn’t have an official update on the health of reliever Brock Stewart on Friday. The team was waiting to see results of a magnetic resonance imaging exam before a 7:10 p.m. first pitch against the White Sox at Target Field.

Stewart, however, knows what it was he felt in his right shoulder during a rough two-third of an inning in a 15-2 loss to the Mets in New York on Monday.

“It was not a good feeling, and it was a feeling that I hadn’t really felt before,” the veteran right-hander said. “So, I relayed that to the training staff. Here we are.”

Stewart, 32, was placed on the 15-day injured list Wednesday with a shoulder strain, which suggests he can work his way back into the bullpen and help as the Twins try to overtake Cleveland in the American League Central. But since joining the Twins mid-season last year, Stewart has never made a quick trip to the injured list.

Last season, Stewart was placed on the 15-day IL with elbow soreness before being transferred to the 60-day IL. This season, he hit the 15-day IL with shoulder tendinitis before being transferred to the 60-day.

It’s frustrating for player and team because Stewart has been generally excellent when he pitches. In 28 appearances last season, he was 2-0 with an 0.65 earned-run average and 39 strikeouts in 27⅔ innings after signing a two-year, minor league contract in July 2022.

Stewart started this season with 12⅓ scoreless innings before the shoulder knocked him out. He made three appearances after being activated on July 24, and opponents hit .539 with a 1.532 OPS in 2⅓ innings.

Asked if he thinks he’ll be back again this season, Stewart said, “I mean, I’m hoping I can get back next week, obviously. I don’t want to not be available.”

This time, the injury is in the same general location, the right shoulder.

Stewart said he didn’t feel it until he already had thrown about 15 pitches, and then only on breaking balls.

“Only the cutters and sweepers when I really had to finish with my hand out in front and on top of the baseball,” he explained. “That’s when I noticed it. It wasn’t like an intense pain, but I know inherently as a pitcher that you’re not supposed to feel what I felt.”

The Twins immediately replaced Stewart on the active roster with Trevor Richards, acquired in a deadline trade with the Toronto Blue Jays for minor-league infielder Jay Harry.

Matt’s hard lemonade

How many major league batters are hitting the ball harder than Matt Wallner? Darn few. On average, in fact, only one.

Wallner entered Friday’s game with only 69 official at-bats in 28 games, so he doesn’t qualify to be an official league-leader in anything. But in his small sample size, the outfielder from Forest Lake is hitting the ball harder, on average, than nearly anyone.

That includes Shohei Ohtani, Giancarlo Stanton and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Wallner’s average exit velocity of 95.9 mph, in 34 of what MLB’s Statcast calls “batted-ball events,” ranks second to only Aaron Judge’s average exit velocity of 96.0. That’s in 235 more BBE, of course, but the fact remains: Wallner hits the ball hard. His 116.8 mph max velocity this season ranks ninth in the majors.

And speed matters, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli noted. As a minor leaguer in Bakersfield, Calif., in 2002 — well before exit velocity was a thing — he had a future MVP teammate in Josh Hamilton.

“On top of all the other things he could do, he just got hits,” Baldelli recalled. “He could chop a ball up the middle and — bing, bing, bing, like a pinball — it’s up the middle and they are diving after it. I’m like, ‘Everything this guy hits is a hit.’ I’m kind of jealous … As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it was not luck. He was hitting the ball harder than everyone else on the field — by a lot. Even when he’s hitting the ball on the ground, you end up seeing more production.”

Wallner, Baldelli noted, “Hits the ball hard like that, and I think we’re seeing a lot of good things like that.”

Wallner entered Friday’s game hitting .364 with five homers and nine RBIs in 15 games since being recalled from Class AAA St. Paul on July 2.

Busted

The Twins brought first-round draft pick Kaelen Culpepper to Target Field on Friday before sending him to the training facility in Fort Myers, Fla. He took some swings in the cage before the game, and broke one of Carlos Correa’s bats.

I didn’t bring anything, any gear to swing with,” said Culpepper, a shortstop from Kansas State. “I think the first bat they brought out was a Louisville Slugger that Royce Lewis swung. I was looking for a bigger barrel with some grip on it.

“They brought out Correa’s bright pink bat. I was swinging good with it. Then the second swing, it just snapped. I was like, ‘Oh.’ Now, I’m here and I’m in debt to Correa.”

Briefly

The Twins had no medical update on Correa, on the 10-day IL with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. He is out of his walking boot and took swings and played catch on Friday. He hasn’t played since July 12.

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