Woman struck with metal bar outside St. Paul homeless shelter, struck again on ground, attempted murder charge says

Mara H. Gottfried, Pioneer Press
Updated ·2 min read

As a woman was looking in another direction, a man hit her in the head with a metal rod. She fell to the ground and he struck her in the head again, according to an attempted murder charge filed Thursday.

The complaint against Crandell Dwayne Turner doesn’t give a motive for the attack in downtown St. Paul.

The 43-year-old has a manslaughter conviction from Louisiana, from a case that happened when he was a juvenile.

The St. Paul assault happened about 7 p.m. Tuesday. Officers responded to the Opportunity Center, which connects adults with services, on Dorothy Day Place near West Seventh Street.

Police found the woman on the sidewalk, bleeding heavily from her head. She was initially transported to United Hospital, but was found to have a fractured skull and an internal brain bleed, so she was transferred to Regions Hospital.

The woman was rushed into surgery in critical condition. When the criminal complaint was filed Thursday morning, it said she was in serious but stable condition.

Witness reports

A witness reported seeing a man, later identified as Turner, enter an open construction site on nearby Smith Avenue and take a metal bar, according to the complaint.

After the assault, a group of good Samaritans followed Turner as he walked away and pointed him out to police as the attacker.

One of the men reported he saw Turner jump in the air and swing down on the woman’s head as she was on the ground, the complaint said.

Another saw Turner approach her from behind and said he looked mad. He and some of his friends confronted Turner, asking why he hit her. Turner replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the complaint continued.

A third good Samaritan reported that the woman was trying to hold her head up after the assault, crying and asking, “Why?”

Investigators reviewed surveillance cameras from the area and saw Turner hit the woman once and then use “a two‐handed overhead swing” to hit her head again when she was on the ground, the complaint said. He walked away.

Louisiana conviction

Turner declined to talk to police. An attorney for him couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.

After a 1998 homicide in Louisiana, when Turner was a juvenile, he was held in Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals until 2016 “when a medical determination was made that he was no longer considered a danger to himself or others,” according to the Ramsey County complaint. He was found competent, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and given credit for time served, the complaint continued.

The 1998 killing was of a 29-year-old man working at a food mart in Garyville, La., about 40 miles from New Orleans. A person shot the employee in the back and then took cash from the register, according to an article in the L’Observateur newspaper.

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