Several agencies responded to a water-rescue call in Stillwater on Thursday afternoon after the Stillwater Lift Bridge tender called authorities to report that a group of young women thought they had seen a young man go into the St. Croix River and not surface.

Law enforcement officers searched the river in boats using sonar scanners, and divers from the Washington County Fire Rescue Dive Team searched the bottom of the river, but no one was found, said Washington County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Kevin Jadwinski.

The initial report, which came in around 4:40 p.m., said the young man was thought to have gone into the river from the undercarriage of the pedestrian bridge, just east of the bridge tender’s building, Jadwinski said.

“Boats with scanning technology searched the river for about two hours and did not see anything,” he said. “Divers were in the river searching the bottoms of the river for 30 to 40 minutes, and they didn’t find anything.”

In addition, crews from the Minnesota Department of Transportation scanned footage from cameras located at the top of the bridge and the bottom of the bridge “going back 30 minutes prior to the call coming in and never located anyone falling or jumping off the bridge,” Jadwinski said.

Law enforcement cleared the scene at 6:36 p.m., he said.

“We always take these types of calls seriously,” Jadwinski said. “We are going to throw all the resources that we have at it if it means saving someone’s life until we can deem that no one is in the water.”

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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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