The Associated Press
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. (AP) -- A fugitive from a federal halfway house died Friday morning after a shoot-out with local police officers in the parking lot of a Pamida store in the downtown of this western Minnesota town.
Police Chief John Wagner said Leslie Fredrickson, 53, was shot and killed after he allegedly threatened officers with a gun. Officers said they heard a gunshot, and returned fire. Fredrickson was taken to Lake Region Hospital.
Fredrickson had been released from prison in Oxford, Wis. on Jan. 7. He was transferred to a federal halfway house in Fargo, N.D. He was supposed to stay there for 60 days, but apparently walked away Thursday night.
Fredrickson’s criminal history with guns goes back 10 years, when he took his 13-year-old son hostage with a .22-caliber rifle. He was released in 1995 and re-arrested days later for stalking former co-workers at the U.S. Postal Service in Fergus Falls.
It was the first of three times Fredrickson would be released, only to be arrested again within days, according to old new reports and police documents.
Police told The Daily Journal of Fergus Falls that Fredrickson kidnapped a woman in her red Cadillac at the Jewel Motel in Fergus Falls on Friday morning. He later shoved her out of the car about a mile south of town and kept driving. She called police and wasn’t hurt accept for some frostbite.
The authorities where prepared for him. Wagner said his department has been warned the night before that Fredrickson was on the loose and the Police Department had warned his relatives and other people he might go after.
“The indication was that he was going to go down shooting,” said Wagner.
The authorities caught up with Fredrickson’s Cadillac northeast of town. The windows were fogged up, so Fredrickson was leaning out of the driver’s side window, said Otter Tail County Sheriff Brian Schlueter.
Deputies tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the car by ramming it and throwing tire-shredding devices called stop sticks in its path. The chase went into downtown Fergus Falls and ended in the parking lot of the Pamida parking lot.
Denise Kvern saw the shooting through her window at Stephen Whoolery’s dental clinic. From her desk looking over the parking lot, she said she saw armed police officers running around the clinic building, communicating with hand signals.
“Then cop cars came from the east, the west and south and surrounded the vehicle,” she told the newspaper. “Then I heard shots. I thought they might have been shooting at his tires or at him -- and then there were ambulances.”
In hindsight, Kvern said she knew she was in some danger. “It was such a shock this was happening. I couldn’t move,” she said. “In reality it happened pretty quickly, but it seemed like forever while I was watching it.”
Wagner did not know how or where Fredrickson got the gun.
Wagner said the two police officers who shot Fredrickson are on administrative leave, which is standard procedure. The names of the two officers were not immediately released.