After days of no arrest and mounting pressure by elected officials, Minneapolis police staged a massive, late-night operation early Monday to apprehend a man suspected of shooting and critically injuring his neighbor last week following months of escalating harassment.
Minneapolis police arrest man charged with shooting neighbor who reported many threats
SWAT negotiators tried to communicate with John H. Sawchak and eventually breached his home Sunday night during a standoff that bled into Monday morning, shortly after Chief Brian O’Hara admitted to failing the victim.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
October 28, 2024 at 8:15PM
Police blocked off a portion of Grand Avenue S. from 35th to 37th streets and several adjacent blocks as officers with tactical shields surrounded the home occupied by 54-year-old John H. Sawchak. For hours, a SWAT negotiator pleaded with Sawchak via loudspeaker to communicate with authorities and surrender.
“John, this is serious,” the negotiator repeated late Sunday night, as restless onlookers gathered behind the police tape. “Please pick up the phone.
“I know you’ve been having problems with the neighbors.”
When Sawchak failed to respond, MPD shattered his windows and used heavy machinery to tear holes into the home’s upper floor. Police arrested him just before 1:30 a.m. Monday, ending the chaotic, five-hour standoff that disrupted much of south Minneapolis’ Lyndale neighborhood.
Sawchak was booked into the Hennepin County jail shortly after 2:30 a.m. and remains held on $1 million bail. He’s due in court Tuesday.
“Ultimately, the individual safely emerged from the house prior to us [deploying] gas,” Chief Brian O’Hara said at an early morning news conference, flanked by Mayor Jacob Frey. “That was our next step that we were prepared to do.”
He hailed the complex operation as “an example of what de-escalation looks like.”
Sawchak, who has a history of mental illness, was charged last week with second-degree attempted murder in the shooting of 34-year-old Davis Moturi. Moturi, who was gravely injured, lives next door to Sawchak in the 3500 block of Grand Avenue S.
In an online fundraiser, Caroline Moturi detailed how the harassment began when the family moved into their home next door in September 2023.
“What should have been the start of a wonderful chapter with my husband became a living nightmare,” she wrote. “Shortly after moving in, our neighbor began harassing us, threatening us, and stalking us. Despite multiple calls to the police for help, we were consistently informed nothing could be done. At one point, an officer who responded to our distress told us to ‘just move out.’ ”
On Wednesday, Moturi was shot once in the neck while pruning a tree near the property line. The bullet fractured his spine and broke two ribs.
Caroline Moturi detailed in the online fundraiser that the shooting left her husband with a concussion and blood accumulating in his lungs. He has since been released from the hospital.
“I can’t bring myself to think of where we would be had the angle of the bullet been slightly different,” she wrote. “My husband is alive with no thanks to the MPD or Mayor Frey.”
The previous week, Sawchak allegedly told Moturi, “Touch my tree again, and I will shoot you,” according to the criminal complaint.
For months, Moturi had called 911 and emailed police investigators about Sawchak’s repeated threats, including an instance earlier this month when Sawchak allegedly pointed a firearm at him.
In records provided to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Moturi once wrote to police: “We are living in hell.”
Despite several pending warrants for his arrest, Sawchak remained at large before his arrest. Wanted flyers plastered on neighborhood telephone poles several months ago declared Sawchak “armed and dangerous” and advised residents to call 911 should they see him.
On Thursday — one day after the shooting — Sawchak was charged in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault, stalking and harassment in connection with the shooting.
Police claimed they had been working to detain Sawchak since April, but regular surveillance outside his house never led to in-person contact. Due to the presence of firearms in the home, O’Hara dismissed the option of carrying out a high-risk warrant, which he feared could lead to a violent confrontation where officers “may have to use deadly force.”
The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
City Council members criticized MPD for their handling of the case, expressing outrage at the department’s inability to protect a resident “from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
The Moturis have reported to police at least 19 instances of vandalism, property destruction, theft, harassment, hate speech and other verbal threats, including threats of assault, involving Sawchak since last fall. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
Over the weekend, as frustration continued to boil over about the lack of a resolution in the case, several more council members released statements demanding that MPD move in to make an arrest.
“Our Chief of Police is hiding behind excuses, and our Mayor … is just hiding,” Council Member Emily Koski wrote on X.
Less than two hours later, from the scene of an unrelated fatal shooting at a homeless encampment, Frey dismissed the comment as someone playing politics. However, O’Hara acknowledged that his police force failed to protect Moturi and issued an apology.
“In this particular instance, we failed this victim 100% because that should not have happened to him,” O’Hara said Sunday evening, citing the department’s depleted staffing. “The Minneapolis police somehow did not act urgently enough to prevent that individual from being shot. And to that victim, I say I am sorry that this happened to you.”
But he vehemently pushed back on allegations that his officers didn’t care or failed to act in this case when, he said, dozens of attempts had been made to contact Sawchak and safely secure his arrest.
It marked a notable tone shift from Friday, when O’Hara delivered fiery remarks defending the department’s cautious handling of a mentally ill recluse with a violent criminal history and knowledge of explosives. The situation “escalated, in part, by actions precipitated by the victim,” he said, referring to Moturi’s decision to cut the tree.
On Monday, O’Hara announced he had ordered a full review of the police actions that led up to the shooting that would include events prior to April. Frey, who admitted that while things weren’t done perfectly, continued to defend the department’s handling of the incident saying that other city leaders have politicized the shooting.
“Simply put, you can’t have it both ways: You can’t call for officers to utilize de-escalation tactics and simply insist that we barge in there guns a blazing when it was an incredibly tenuous circumstance,” Frey said.
Following Sawchak’s arrest, O’Hara elaborated that Sawchak planted the tree with his mother, and “he apparently had a deep attachment” to it. But police had no reason to believe he would shoot Moturi from inside the house.
In August 2016, a Hennepin County judge ordered Sawchak civilly committed to a mental health treatment center after a doctor’s examination determined that he was suffering from a host of psychological illnesses, among them paranoia, bipolar and delusional disorders that left him posing “a substantial likelihood of causing harm,” according to court records.
A doctor who interviewed Sawchak pointed out that he “believed that his neighbor’s unspecified malevolent actions affected [his] television reception, that snow melting on a roof proved that his neighbor was manufacturing methamphetamine, and that a neighbor woman was the daughter of a police officer involved in a conspiracy against him,” the order read.
The commitment followed when Sawchak two months earlier slashed the tires of a Minneapolis police squad and yelled “You tried to kill me, you tried to kill me!” at an officer, the judge’s order read. Sawchak, who drew police attention because of potentially dangerous actions on a bicycle, refused commands from police to drop the knife until the officer pointed his gun at him, the order and a related criminal complaint noted.
Sawchak was charged with second-degree assault in connection with the encounter, but a judge found him incompetent to stand trial. He ended up pleading guilty to obstructing police, a gross misdemeanor. The civil commitment ended in January 2017.
Sawchak’s behavior only escalated in recent years.
In the aftermath of Moturi’s shooting, police sat watch over the residence for several days, O’Hara said, waiting for him to emerge. He never did. Law enforcement ramped up their efforts about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, cordoning off the area and calling in a SWAT negotiator. Drones circled the building overhead as police busted out windows and delivered a cellphone that they hoped Sawchak would use to communicate with police.
He refused to surrender — until they announced their intention to tear gas his home.
Star Tribune staff writer Nicole Norfleet and Deena Winter contributed to this story.
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