Olivia, Minn., struggles to understand fatal shooting by police officer

OLIVIA, MINN. – They knew each other, the two men facing off in a dark alley in this west-central Minnesota town. They had a history.

In the past five years, Ricardo Torres Jr. had been arrested four times by Aaron Clouse, an Olivia police officer. On one occasion, according to court records, Clouse chased Torres through a grain elevator and used a Taser on him.

This time, Clouse used a gun.

"Shots fired behind Dirks Furniture," a breathless Clouse radioed at 2:20 a.m. on July 4. "Rick Torres just pulled a gun on me. Shots fired. Send help."

Torres, 32, died within minutes after suffering multiple gunshot wounds. Clouse was uninjured. Police said they found a sawed-off shotgun at the scene.

Now this Renville County town of 2,500 about 95 miles west of the Twin Cities, which bills itself as the "Corn Capital of the World," is dealing with an issue familiar to the Twin Cities — the death of a man of color at the hands of a white police officer.

"What a thing for a small town — my gosh," said Jim Wagemaker, a retired attorney who stood Friday morning gazing at the memorial to Torres that has sprung up in the alley where he died. "It's a very unfortunate thing for a small town, for everyone involved."

Clouse is a native of Olivia, a graduate of the local high school. Torres hailed from a large extended family of Mexican heritage that traveled north from Texas for seasonal farm work some 20 years ago, with many settling down. Torres himself had lived in Olivia and several surrounding communities for about five years.

About 12% of Olivia's residents are Latino, many of Mexican descent.

Some in Olivia's Mexican-American community say Clouse had a reputation as an officer who liked to harass people with brown skin.

"We knew it was Aaron Clouse before they even told us," said Samuel Flores, a cousin of Torres who said they were like brothers. "He's a racist guy with us Mexicans.

"He'll stop you for no reason. Even if you're walking, he'd drive slow and ask you what you're doing. He's always circling around. We can't have a barbecue without him cruising by five or 10 times."

Clouse, an 11-year veteran of the force, has been placed on administrative leave. Olivia police have declined to comment on the case.

Wagemaker, a lifelong town resident, said area farmers depend on Mexican workers for hard work in the fields. "The Hispanic people have been coming here for years and years and years," he said.

"It's not a community that's racially divided," said Linda Stadther, who lives on a farm just outside town. "It's a pretty close-knit community. You'll go to a birthday party, and half the people will be white and half will be Hispanic, and it just seems normal."

A Star Tribune database of more than 200 officer-involved deaths spanning about two decades shows that more than one-third of the incidents occurred outside the metro area and in greater Minnesota. About a quarter of those outstate officer-involved deaths were people of color or Hispanic ancestry.

In 2020, the database showed a total of six officer-involved deaths in greater Minnesota, the most of any year since 2000. This year, five fatal police encounters have been recorded in greater Minnesota, including deaths of all races.

Torres had run-ins with officers other than Clouse.

In addition to his arrests in Olivia, he'd been arrested in neighboring Willmar and Danube. Since 2017, criminal charges had been filed against him 11 times, including the four arrests by Clouse. Many cases were dismissed, and all his convictions were for misdemeanors. According to court records, he served four separate stints in county jails for terms ranging from 30 to 98 days.

His convictions included driving after his license was revoked; driving with an open bottle; possessing drug paraphernalia; disorderly conduct and fleeing a police officer. In 2007, Torres was convicted in Texas of felony robbery and, several years later, possession of a gun by a felon, according to court records.

"He had his issues, but as a human being, who doesn't?" said Hailey Pugh, whose sister, Natasha Lindner, was Torres' longtime girlfriend and the mother of his infant son.

"I'm just devastated. Ricky was a very big-hearted person, a very loving father," said Pugh, who recounted repeated contacts between Torres and Clouse.

"Tasha and Ricky lived with me for six months, and Clouse was at my apartment more times than I could count on my fingers and toes," she said. They always went out into the hall to talk, she said, so she doesn't know what they discussed.

But the circumstances of Torres' death are puzzling, she added.

"Stuff just doesn't line up," Pugh said. "To be in the same alleyway at the same time at that hour of the day?"

Torres often carried a pellet gun, which he used to hunt varmints. Police found a pellet gun or BB gun at the scene of at least two of his arrests. But family members say he never carried a real gun.

"He wasn't a guy to act big. He didn't like to fight," said Flores. "I never saw him walking around with any gun. We never talked about guns, and he tells me everything."

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is handling the investigation of the shooting. There's no bodycam or dashcam video, the bureau said.

On Wednesday, about 60 townspeople gathered for a peaceful candlelight vigil near the site of the shooting. They were interrupted by a parade of pickup trucks that drove by slowly, revving their engines and honking their horns. Rumors quickly spread around town that a busload of demonstrators from the Twin Cities was coming to the vigil, residents said.

A message posted on social media asked counterdemonstrators to meet at the Dairy Queen, warning that "there is going to be a riot in Olivia."

The two sides faced off and shouted at each other for 15 or 20 minutes before police came and broke it up, allowing the vigil to continue.

On Friday, Torres' body was released to his family, who gathered outside the local funeral home — Dirks-Blem Funeral Home — founded by the same family behind whose furniture store Torres was shot.

Torres' mother, Elsa Villarreal, traveled from Texas to view her son's body.

"He had one right through the chest," she said, sobbing as she slapped her hand against her breastbone.

Villarreal believes her son had left a party that night and was on the way to visit the home of a cousin just a block away from where the shooting occurred. According to the police dispatch tape, Clouse said he had been setting up a surveillance camera in the alley when the two men met.

Torres' mother believes the officer was looking for her son.

"I just want justice," she said. "We want justice."

Staff writer Jeff Hargarten contributed to this report.

John Reinan • 612-673-7402