Powderhorn crime watch

by Dennis Giesinger

Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct crime statistics for October count the 40th homicide victim for the city so far this year and at least two violent sexual assaults. Powderhorn, Phillips, Central, Corcoran, Bryant, Bancroft and Standish neighborhoods are included in the Third’s crime reports.

Forty-year-old Kevin Lashon Lewis was stabbed to death in the alley behind 3511 Columbus Ave. S. on Oct. 21, after alleged involvement with two others in an attempted robbery. According to details provided by investigators, Lewis and another man, Germaine Rogers, 34, planned to rob a man after Meranda Lea Wood, 23, their prostitute accomplice had taken him into an open out-building for oral sex. After demanding his money, Lewis hit the intended robbery victim with a beer bottle and in the fight that followed, Lewis and Rogers were both stabbed with a knife Wood had given them. Lewis fell, mortally wounded, and Rogers and Wood were taken to he Hennepin County jail and charged with 2nd degree murder, aggravated robbery and 1st and 2nd degree manslaughter. Bail was set at $75,000.

A registered sex offender from Illinois who had not registered with Minneapolis police, Mike Cordale Henderson, was arrested early on the morning of Oct. 14 near Blaisdale Aveneue and 28th Street and charged with felony attempted kidnapping and felony false imprisonment. Police say the address Henderson gave them was for a local homeless shelter. During the same week, two other unregistered sex offenders were also arrested in South Minneapolis.

According to Metro Transit Police, a 28-year-old Minneapolis man with no permanent address was arrested for the Oct. 4 rape of a 44-year-old Minneapolis woman whom he’d abducted from a 38th St. light rail station in the early morning hours and taken to a nearby apartment. He faces charges of 1st degree sexual assault, kidnapping and aggravated robbery. Police say video taken at the station and the woman’s recollection of pertinent details were essential for the arrest.

One person was arrested in a robbery of a taxi driver on Lake Street near 12th Avenue. The driver was punched and had his pockets gone through and one suspect is still at large. The arrest of the other suspect was made after he returned to the scene.

The daughter of a former buyer was identified in the robbery of a jewelry salesman on the 3700 block of Portland Avenue South. Other suspects in the robbery remain unidentified.

A cell phone was stolen by three suspects who punched their victim in the head near the intersection of 31st Street and Columbus Avenue South.

A victim walking to a store was stabbed several times in the torso with an awl-type weapon near 31st and Minnehaha Avenue after he resisted his assailant. He was treated at Hennepin County Medical Center with non-life-threatening wounds. Police report no leads in the case.

The 3rd Precinct reports that violent crimes overall rose again by 31 percent by the end of the third week of October, compared to the same week in 2006, but continue their downward trend for the year, having fallen by 6 percent. And although having risen by 18 percent for Oct. 14-21, property crime rates are beginning to decline slightly, down 4 percent this year over last. Police say relational mapping shows highest crime density areas around high numbers of home foreclosures.