A man shot multiple times by police Monday in a busy Woodbury shopping center was wielding a pistol-style BB gun when confronted by officers, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

The shooting happened Monday morning in the parking lot at Target in Woodbury Village, near the intersection of Interstate 494 and Valley Creek Drive.

Donald Roche, 63, remains hospitalized in serious condition, the BCA said in a release with further details from the preliminary investigation.

The officers who fired at him were Washington County sheriff’s deputy Brian Krook and Woodbury police officer James Stoffel. Both are on standard administrative leave, the BCA said.

According to the agency, Woodbury police license plate readers spotted a car in the Target lot that was connected to a felony-level crime. A person associated with the vehicle also was wanted in connection with a felony-level crime. Officers found no one in the vehicle, but, as they were investigating, Roche returned to it.

Roche “fought with officers when they attempted to arrest him,” Woodbury Public Safety Director Jason Posel said in a release earlier this week

The officers saw the man had a handgun and officers “backed off,” at which point the man barricaded himself in the vehicle, the BCA press release said.

Police called the Washington County SWAT team, which negotiated with Roche and used less-than-lethal force, including 40 millimeter and PepperBall chemical irritants, to get him to surrender.

“Roche got out of the vehicle, ignored commands from the officers, and again pulled out what looked like a handgun and pointed it in their direction,” the BCA release said. “That’s when Stoffel fired his rifle and Krook fired his department handgun. Roche was struck by the gunfire.”

Officers provided medical aid at the scene until Roche could be taken to the hospital for treatment.

The BCA is reviewing all available video, including footage from body worn and squad car cameras. It is also working to determine the exact nature of the alert on the license plates that summoned law enforcement and how it is connected to the vehicle and Roche.

According to the BCA, Krook has 13 years of law enforcement experience and Stoffel has 11.

The officers who used nonlethal force were:

Woodbury police officer Scott Melander, who has 27 years of law enforcement experience.
Woodbury police officer Matthew Noren, who has 19 years of law enforcement experience.
Cottage Grove police officer Benjamin Deitner, who has five years of law enforcement experience.
Cottage Grove police officer Matthew Sorgaard, who has eight years of law enforcement experience.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — a potential running mate for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — is getting attention again. This time, it’s for a new book where she writes about killing an unruly dog, and a smelly goat, too.

The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.

She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state.

In her book, Noem writes that she took Cricket on a hunting trip with older dogs in hopes of calming down the wild puppy. Instead, Cricket chased the pheasants while “having the time of her life.”

On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor.

Noem apologized profusely, wrote the distraught family a check for the deceased chickens, and helped them dispose of the carcasses, she writes. Cricket “was the picture of joy” as all that unfolded.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, deeming her “untrainable.”

“At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her.

That wasn’t all. Noem writes that her family also owned a “nasty and mean” male goat that smelled bad and liked to chase her kids. She decided to go ahead and kill the goat, too. She writes that the goat survived the first shot, so she went back to the truck, got another shell, then shot him again, killing him.

Soon thereafter, a school bus dropped off Noem’s children. Her daughter asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?” Noem writes.

The excerpts drew immediate criticism on social media platforms, where many posted photos of their own pets. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign surfaced the story on social media alongside a photo of Noem with Trump.

The Lincoln Project, a conservative group that opposes Trump, posted a video that it called a “public service announcement,” showing badly behaved dogs and explaining that “shooting your dog in the face is not an option.”

“You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit,” Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project wrote on X. “Unsporting and deliberately cruel … but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Noem took to social media to defend herself.

“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she said on X. “Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

She urged readers to preorder her book if they want “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”

Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that while some Republican voters might appreciate the story “as a testament to her grit,” it ultimately creates a distraction for Noem.

“It’s never a good look when people think you’re mistreating animals,” Stewart said. “I have a dog I love like a child and I can’t imagine thinking about doing that, I can’t imagine doing that, and I can’t imagine writing about it in a book and telling all the world.”

It’s not the first time Noem has grabbed national attention.

In 2019, she stood behind the state’s anti-meth campaign even as it became the subject of some mockery for the tagline “Meth. We’re on it.” Noem said the campaign got people talking about the methamphetamine epidemic and helped lead some to treatment.

Last month, Noem posted a nearly five-minute video on X lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas for giving her a smile she said she can be proud of. “I love my new family at Smile Texas!” she wrote.

South Dakota law bans gifts of over $100 from lobbyists to public officials and their immediate family. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable up to a year in jail and/or a $2,000 fine. The state attorney general’s office has declined to answer questions about whether the gift ban applies to people who are not registered lobbyists.

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By the time Luca Guadagnino’s erotically charged tennis film “Challengers” reaches its breathless, sweaty, pulse-pounding and deeply satisfying climax, you’ll be reaching for a cigarette, so to speak. Rarely is a film so sensorially captivating, every element of cinema, including script, cinematography, editing, score and performance blending together to create such a fizzy, frenzied brew, a chemical reaction of rage and lust sizzling with bubbling ferocity.

“Challengers” is a movie about bodies: sexy, strong, scarred bodies; bodies in glorious motion, crumpling under force, and drawn together over space and time, again and again. During a hard-fought match at a New Rochelle tournament, our players — which include the two men on the court and one woman, spectating on the sidelines — engage in body talk, communicating with gestures, glances, grunts and gasps, expressing what’s been left unsaid between them.

It’s the ultimate example of the concept that tennis isn’t just hitting a ball, it’s a relationship. This bit of wisdom was espoused by teen tennis phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) 13 years prior to this match; now she watches this relationship unfold as two men smash the ball back and forth in front of her. They are her husband, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), and her ex, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Art is a honed, sculpted god, taped, gelled and optimized under Tashi’s watchful eye; Patrick is a grungy tennis bum, sleeping in his car, scamming sandwiches off sympathetic officials, and places to crash on Tinder. Over the course of each set, we’ll come to understand the complex relationship between this trio.

Mike Faist, left, and Josh O’Connor in “Challengers.” (Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc./TNS)

The script is the debut of playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes, who happens to be married to Celine Song, Oscar nominated this year for her debut feature, “Past Lives,” which also features a woman caught between two men, weighing passionate connection against pragmatic concerns. Where Song’s film was about the power and beauty of silence and patience, Kuritzkes’ script is hyperactive, the characters smart, cutting and acerbic, simultaneously deeply romantic and cynical. On a structural level, the screenplay can’t stop moving either. The central tennis match serves as a framing device for a series of flashbacks starting with the characters’ summer before college and covering every angst-ridden tangle in between.

But it’s Guadagnino’s filmmaking that elevates the material to truly transcendent heights. The film is shot with crisp, epic clarity by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose camera continually draws triangles between our players, and collaborates brilliantly with editor Marco Costa, who cuts in time with the throbbing techno score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

The match starts with extreme wide shots, mannered and removed, before the camera swoops in on Tashi as the beat drops, zeroing in on the woman for whom these men have always been competing. But as we come back to the match, again and again, the camera gets closer to Art and Patrick, becoming erratic and experimental. By the end, we’re seeing shots from the point of view of the players, the court and even the ball, wildly flying back and forth across the net, batted around like every person in this triangle has been by the others at some point.

It’s through this tennis metaphor that Kuritzkes and Guadagnino explore the way power, desire and ambition are woven throughout intimate relationships in a fetishistic way. The ruthlessly professional Tashi seems to get off on psychologically and sexually controlling Art and Patrick, which the chaotic Patrick resists and to which Art happily submits. Their marriage is one of his surrender to her wishes as an act of pure love and devotion, even though she is helplessly drawn to Patrick’s dancing, destructive flame. The sexually omnivorous and opportunistic Patrick, for all his indecision, sees the situation clearly, but then again, they all seem to. They just want what they want.

Guadagnino is one of our greatest auteurs of desire, especially the forbidden kind, and “Challengers” is a deeply erotic and sexy movie even though it doesn’t have all that much sex. Like everything else — conversation, arguments, catharsis — the sex is subsumed into tennis. Still, it is an incredibly lusty film, and it’s rare to enjoy this kind of explosive screen chemistry among all three performers.

Faist, who comes from theater and dance, moves with beautiful intention, and Mukdeeprom’s camera regards his every angle with fascination. In contrast, O’Connor embodies the kind of louche, grimy and utterly dangerous sexuality that most women find infuriating and irresistible. Zendaya is as enthrallingly intelligent, mysterious and unpredictable as she has ever been, and it’s easily her best performance.

“Challengers” is the kind of sexy, engrossing somewhat twisted romance we don’t see enough of these days, a thrilling film, thrillingly rendered in its layered storytelling expressed in the purest cinematic form. Take advantage while you can.

‘Challengers’

4 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity)

Running time: 2:11

How to watch: In theaters April 26

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