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VOLUME 119 115 NUMBER 41 26
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WEDNESDAY, WEDNESDAY,JANUARY AUGUST 12, 26,2015 2011
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Man fatally stabbed, suspect charged
Glance
by Kristine Goodrich Editor
News inside See inside for the following news items: downtown business owners survey finds more parking is top desire, Mahtomedi City Council OKs resident beekeeping, White Bear Town Board approves town hall relocation funding, Ramsey County manager proposes tax levy increase, Zappa’s Sporting Goods is closing, and a White Bear Lake resident talks about excavating old outhouses in search of artifacts.
A White Bear Lake man allegedly claims he fatally stabbed a family friend because the friend was choking his brother. Robert Darren Derks Olson, 47, died inside a house on Crown Hill Court on Aug. 6. Joseph James Derks, 21, was charged Aug. 7 with second-degree homicide. Derks' brother and a witness corroborated Derks' defense that Olson was choking his brother. Derks allegedly accidentally stabbed his 17-year-old brother in the leg during the incident; he was taken to a hospital but his injury wasn't lifethreatening, according to a White Bear Lake Police Department statement. The criminal complaint outlines the alleged details of the dispute and stabbing: Police officers responded to a 911 call of an injured man and “blood everywhere” and found Derks, his injured brother and four others outside. Derks reportedly confessed
I-35E closure A segment of I-35E will be closed this weekend while crews are replacing pipes. The southbound freeway will be shut down between the I-35E and I-35W split and County Road E beginning at 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 14. The freeway will reopen by 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug.16.
Upcoming events See inside for the following upcoming events: Heritage Days, BearPower family fitness night, historical society scrapbooking crop, act happy workshop, history presentations about the Inland Lakes Yachting Association and the Fillebrown House, and a workshop about raingardens.
he had stabbed a family friend later identified as Olson because Olson wouldn't stop choking his brother. Officers found Olson in a basement bedroom in a pool of blood. He had a weak pulse but died before paramedics arrived. He had a large wound across the back of his head and neck as well as smaller cuts across his neck and back. Derks gave the same account to officers on scene and in a later interview, according to the complaint. He said he came over to his family's house at his brother's request because Olson was refusing to leave the house. He brought a friend and a knife and a club with him. When he arrived, Derks said he found Olson choking his brother on a bed. Derks reportedly admitted he stabbed Olson repeatedly until Olson let go of his brother, accidentally also stabbing his brother in the process. The brother told police that his father called and asked him to kick Olson out of the house. But Olson allegedly refused to leave and became angry. The teen went outside and called his brother for help. After he came back inside Olson began to choke him, he said. He yelled for his girlfriend to get a knife, to which Olson reportedly responded by choking him harder. The 17-year-
Development takes name from nearby water tower by Debra Neutkens Regional Editor
Public notices See pages 4B-6B for public notices, including Gem Lake hearings on the 2016 budget and the proposed watermain extension along County Road E.
Weather Tidbits
Week of August 12-18, 2015 Weather tidbit: August 19, 2010: Several tornadoes hit the Metro area. One hit just south of Downtown Mpls near the Mpls Convention Center, and another touched down in Cottage Grove. Year Ago this week: August 16-17, heavy rains soak the state. Hampton (Dakota Co.) totaled 5.56”.
Weekly Averages High Low %Sun PCP 81° 61° 70% 0.82” (More weather on sports page)
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WHITE BEAR LAKE — The vacant farmstead owned by the late Jarmila Lande will soon be razed. Long gone are the horses she kept on the acreage sandwiched between the interstate and Centerville Road. A city water tower perches on her former property, which shares a sizable wetland and a billboard oriented toward southbound I-35E. A two-phase development called Tower Crossings has been proposed for the 8.4-acre site that will consist of retail and residential at 4650 Centerville Road across from Cub Foods. Plans also include the purchase of excess municipal property around the city's water tower. Longtime city attorney Roger Jensen remembers Lande well. "I used to take my son over to her farm to pet the horses," he said. "He's now 42, so that was at least 30 years ago. She boarded a
few horses to claim 'green acres' for property tax purposes. She did that for years. She was a crusty old gal but sweet, too. She'd come to City Council meetings and tell off the council because her property was being chewed up by public entities." Once a much larger farm that extended east to Birch Lake, the Federal Highway Administration divided Lande's property into two pieces in 1970 when I-35E was constructed. In 1985, the city divided the western piece for its water tower, acquired through eminent domain, which included a 30-foot connection to Centerville Road. "The state took a big chunk of her property for the highway," Jensen noted. "Then the city took some for the water tower and more for White Bear Parkway. When Centerville Road was widened, they took more of her land. It did allow her to stay on the farm, which is what she really wanted.
Lande/see page 7A
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Jarmila Lande’s vacant farmhouse is visible on the property next to a city water tower. A proposed development on the site is dubbed Tower Crossings.
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old said he thought Olson was going to kill him. His brother arrived and stabbed Olson until Olson let go, he said. The girlfriend said she witnessed the dispute, saw Olson begin to choke her boyfriend and heard him ask her to get a knife. She went outside after Derks arrived but said she heard her boyfriend scream about being stabbed and heard Olson say “You killed me. You killed me.”
A neighbor and an acquaintance of Olson told police they witnessed Olson and the 17-yearold arguing outside and Derks and a friend arrive with weapons. The neighbor reported seeing the 17-year-old break items outside the house and take a large socket wrench with him inside.
Stabbing/see page 7A
- Photo by Paul Dols
Crown Hill Court and Grand Avenue were roped off for several hours Aug. 6 while investigators were on scene.
Lost Purple Heart returned by Kristine Goodrich Editor A series of coincidences involving a long-lost Purple Heart has a White Bear Lake woman wondering if there is such a thing as coincidences. Two decades after her mother found a Purple Heart in a dump, Tami Heart returned the medal to its rightful family. The lost medal was given in memory of a young World War II soldier lost at sea. Heart and her mother had no idea that the honoree of their mysterious medal grew up in the very same house that became their summer getaway on the Iron Range. Happenstances a few years ago lead to that revelation and to the identification of the lost soldier's relatives. Heart's mother was looking for discarded treasures in a Grand Rapids area dump in the mid-1990s when she found the Purple Heart and its case in a box of clothing. Heart isn't positive but believes it was the dump in Swan River, near the family cabin in Wawina. The medal was engraved with the name Wiljo Matalamaki. Heart's mother had never heard that surname so she tucked the medal away for safekeeping. Heart's mother died in 2000 and Heart inherited the cabin and the Purple Heart. Heart logged onto to the Web and found out a little about Matalamaki. "I found a group photo of his squadron and learned that he died in World War II in 1944 when his plane went down," she wrote. “His body was never recovered and he was only 22 years old. That was the extent of information on the Web back then." Later Web searches revealed that Sgt. Matalamaki was an engineer with the Army 8th Air Force 429nd Bomb Group's 856 Bomber Squadron. On June 20, 1944, his crew was in a B-24 bomber en route to bomb German oil refineries when it was shot down over the Baltic Sea, according to www.492ndbombgroup.com. Further online searching by Heart found just one distant relative of Matalamaki. That relative wasn't interested in claiming the Purple Heart. So Heart kept the Purple Heart and made sure Matalamaki's sacrifice was not forgotten. She brought the medal to
– Submitted photo
A photograph of Wiljo Matalamaki, with his Purple Heart and case that were found in a dump and returned to his family last week. the White Bear Lake VFW many Veterans Days and Memorial Days and “told anyone who would listen” about Matalamaki, she said. “I never knew Wiljo but he started to feel like family to me. I was very attached to his Purple Heart,” she said. The connection grew stronger during a visit to her cabin in 2013. With no electricity or running water, it is a rustic retreat built in the late 1800s. Heart knew that her mother had purchased the cabin from a woman nicknamed Bullwhip because she used a whip to fend off danger. She did not know who built the structure or who had been its early occupants. It was her getaway in the middle of 40 acres of woods with no neighbors in sight. Then one day she locked herself out of her retreat and trekked to the nearest neighbor seeking assistance. That neighbor provided her quite the revelation (“the shock of my life,” she said) when he referred to her cabin as the “old Matalamaki house.” The old man advised that Wiljo, his parents and his siblings had once lived in her cabin.
Purple Heart/see page 7A
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