Family blames DNR for negligence after son’s landslide death a year ago near Mankato

MANKATO – Patti Loso’s candle flickered in the bitter winter wind as she asked the crowd for a moment of silence. Her 19-year-old son, Jack, was killed in a landslide one year ago in Minneopa State Park.

“For if you always think of me, I will never have gone,” Patti Loso said, quoting a funeral poem by Margaret Mead, at a vigil on Saturday overlooking the waterfall where her son died.

Patti Loso, 57, and her husband, Robert, 56, said they blame the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for negligence leading to their son’s death.

“How could they allow this to happen?” Patti Loso said in a recent phone call. “It’s a failure of their system to not have the means in place to adequately inform and warn people.”

The Robbinsdale couple said they plan to file a lawsuit against the DNR within the next month. They claim state officials were negligent in warning park visitors about the risks of landslides in the area. Their lawyer Jeff Storms, based in Minneapolis, said he plans to serve the lawsuit soon.

The DNR in a statement said the Losos via their family’s attorney have filed a notice of intent to file a claim. “Given the clear potential for litigation we cannot comment further at this time,” Gail Nosek, DNR communications director, said Monday morning.

“Our thoughts and condolences continue to be with the family and loved ones of Jack Loso following this tragic loss,” the DNR statement said.

Minneopa State Park is a 58-acre recreational area just outside of Mankato, with two waterfalls. Jack Loso, a student at Minnesota State Mankato, visited the park with his sister and cousin on Dec. 2, 2023. He walked down a trail to the base of the lower waterfall, and then the sandstone cliff above him collapsed and buried him.

Patti and Robert Loso said state officials should have installed signs warning of the dangers of falling rock. They claim the cliffs had been visibly deteriorating for several months before their son’s death.

The area around Minneopa State Park is known to be prone to landslides. Researchers mapped landslides near the Blue Earth River and found almost 500 points around Mankato where a landslide or rockslide had occurred, the Mankato Free Press reported in 2018.

Efforts to track landslide risk statewide kicked off in response to a 2013 landslide in St. Paul that killed two children on a fossil-hunting field trip, but the Loso family said their son’s death has not prompted similar levels of scrutiny.

The pathway down to the base of the lower waterfall at Minneopa State Park closed last year and remained blocked off Saturday.

The parents said they hope to help create a conservation group in Mankato in their son’s honor.

Members of the Minnesota Valley Chapter of the Izaak Walton League and their Green Crew Program attended Saturday’s vigil. The group said they are in the early stages of setting up a chapter in Mankato, where they envision some 25 youth volunteers teaching people about conservation.

“We’ve never done something like this before; this is kind of a special connection we’ve made,” said Kiora Matthews, who has been helping set up the chapter.

Patti Loso on Saturday said she hopes people talk about her son, who she said was clever and sarcastic with a wickedly dry sense of humor. Returning to the park where her son died was difficult, but she and her husband said they wanted people to see the place as one of beauty, not just of tragedy.

“Maybe some good will come out of this,” Robert Loso said.