St. Paul man gets 8 years for ramming squad car after assaulting wife

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
·5 min read

St. Paul police officer Joe Labathe says he didn’t see it coming. Before he knew it, Ble Moo accelerated his pickup truck straight toward his squad car and rammed the driver’s side, injuring the officer.

With the truck pinned up against the squad car, Labathe climbed out through the passenger side. He and another officer arrested Moo, who had his 4-year-old daughter and an infant daughter in the truck without safety seats. The children were not injured.

Labathe recalled the Oct. 14, 2021, incident Wednesday at Moo’s sentencing, telling Ramsey County District Judge Andrew Gordon that Moo “self-admitted to the investigator in the case, Sgt. Amber Larson, that he was indeed attempting to kill me.”

Gordon went on to convict Moo of first-degree assault involving use of deadly force against a peace officer and sentence him to just over eight years in prison. A second-degree attempted murder charge filed in the case was dismissed as part of a package plea agreement involving two other cases against Moo, 29, of St. Paul.

The incident stemmed from a report that Moo had assaulted his wife the night before. Labathe and other officers had responded to the Health Partners Clinic at Wabasha Street and Plato Boulevard to meet with Moo’s wife.

As she was being interviewed, Moo left the building with his two children. Labathe was in his squad car and planned to pull him over in the parking lot.

“Mr. Moo stopped and aimed his 2010 Ford F-150 XLT — a 2½-ton piece of steel — at my squad car,” Labathe told Judge Gordon.

‘Wanted to kill someone’

According to the criminal complaint, a witness told police she was suspicious of Moo when he took his kids out of the clinic. She said she watched him drive slowly around the clinic’s parking lot, then accelerate and hit the squad car. Dash-cam video from another officer’s squad recorded the crash.

Side airbags of Labathe’s squad car deployed, and the driver-side window shattered. He was taken to Regions Hospital to be evaluated after experiencing neck, back and hip pain and a cut lip.

“In my opinion, if Mr. Moo had another 100 feet to accelerate, I would not have been going home to see my kids, but would have been murdered at that time,” Labathe said Wednesday in court. “I wish that Mr. Moo had taken into consideration my life and also what was happening to the lives of the children in his vehicle at that time.”

During the interview with Sgt. Larson, Moo said he had a small scratch on his hand from the crash and that he thought his children were OK. “I am pretty sure, but when I had a crash … the little one flipped over,” he said, according to the complaint.

When Moo was asked if he tried to hit the squad car, he said, “Yeah, I did … because I wanted to,” the complaint states. When asked if he wanted to hurt the officer, Moo said, “Yeah, I wanted to kill somebody.”

Moo also admitted to pulling a kitchen knife on his wife the previous night, saying he “just cut her pants a little bit.”

Plea agreement

As part of his January agreement with the prosecution, Moo also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, a charge that involved holding his wife captive at knifepoint at their St. Paul home in February 2022, when he was out of jail on $50,000 bond.

According to the criminal complaint, after Moo refused to surrender, SWAT team members stormed into the home and rescued his wife, who was with her infant. She had an order for protection against Moo at the time.

In that case, Judge Gordon on Wednesday sentenced Moo to a 39-month prison term, which will run concurrent with the 98 months he received for ramming into Labathe’s squad car.

Two charges filed against Moo in connection with assaulting his wife the night before the crash were dismissed as part of the plea deal. According to the complaint, Moo’s wife told police at the Health Partners Clinic that he had been drinking and using drugs and started an argument with her. She said he pulled out a knife, and swung it at her. She was able to get away without being cut.

“Extreme violence appears to be a central issue for the defendant,” county prosecutor Cory Tennison told the judge before the sentences were handed down.

The 98-month maximum sentence under the plea agreement is “appropriate to protect this man’s family from him, and the public,” Tennison said.

Moo’s attorney Ryan Kaess argued for a 39-month sentence. He said Moo escaped a civil war in Burma, where he “witnessed death, torture and inhumane conditions.” After arriving in the U.S., he started a family, but turned to drugs and alcohol to “try and drown out that pain.”

“Your honor, Mr. Moo has learned. Mr. Moo has grown. Mr. Moo is a different person,” Kaess said.

Judge Gordon was unswayed by the remarks, telling Moo, “There could have easily been four dead individuals on the afternoon of Oct. 14, 2021. While you will not be sentenced as if someone died, those facts undoubtedly play a role in my unwillingness today to depart further than the agreement.”

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