Becker County man charged with murder, manslaughter in weekend trailer park shooting

As a 31-year-old man shared a late-night cigarette with a woman in his car outside her home in a Frazee trailer park over the weekend, another man approached the vehicle and smashed the window. The driver said he feared for his life as the man hit him, so he pulled out his handgun and fired twice.

Prosecutors accuse Willis Charles McDonald, 31 of Frazee, of shooting Arlan Ray Bergstrom Jr., 31 of Detroit Lakes, on Saturday morning at Acorn Lake Trailer Park on Hwy. 10, according to charges filed Monday in Becker County District Court.

The trailer park is about 4 miles from McDonald’s residence, where he fled after the shooting and called 911 to report that he was home. Minnesota State troopers arrested him without incident and he is being held on second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter charges.

Law enforcement responded around 1:20 a.m. after the woman called 911 saying Bergstrom had been shot.

In interviews at the Becker County Jail with a sheriff lieutenant and an agent from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, McDonald walked officers through a timeline of what led up to the shooting, according to the charges:

McDonald said earlier that day he was at the Becker County Fair with his family. He said he briefly hung out with the woman at the fair before leaving. The woman later messaged him on Snapchat asking him “to come over for a cigarette,” charges state. He agreed to meet her at her home at the trailer park.

She came out to his vehicle and they were visiting and having a cigarette. A man identified as Bergstrom later approached the vehicle and the woman told McDonald to roll up his window. Bergstrom broke the window and punched McDonald in the face.

McDonald said he feared for his safety and his life. He reached for his Heckler and Koch VP9 9mm handgun and fired once, but he said nothing happened. He said he cocked the handgun again and fired “while he was still being hit by the victim,” charges say.

Bergstrom stumbled to the ground and fell after the second gunshot, McDonald said. He then threw the gun in the back seat and the woman told him to leave.

McDonald said he previously had a permit to carry but that it had recently expired. He also admitted fleeing the scene and drinking four beers earlier at the demolition derby.

He decided to call 911 after speaking to his sister, he added.

The woman who he smoked a cigarette with and who called 911 gave a description of events to authorities that largely matched McDonald’s narrative. She said Bergstrom and McDonald did not know each other and have never met before.

In a provisional autopsy, the medical examiner said Bergstrom’s cause of death was a gunshot wound to the chest of intermediate to distant range.