Ex-mayor who threatened to shoot U of M students arrested after 4-hours-long standoff

A man suspected of threatening to shoot students at the University of Minnesota was arrested Thursday afternoon after an hours-long standoff at his home in southwestern Minnesota.

Joseph Rongstad, 41, was arrested just after 4:15 p.m. "safely, without incident," Chippewa County Sheriff Derek Olson said in a Facebook post. Olson said Friday the standoff lasted about 4 hours, beginning when a SWAT team arrived to Rongstad's house around 11:45 a.m.

Rongstad was booked into Chippewa County Jail on probable cause for felony-level threats of violence, Olson wrote in a follow-up post. He said investigators are looking to file multiple threats of violence charges. Both the Sheriff's Office and the West Central SWAT Team carried out the arrest on Rongstad, Olson said.

The Sheriff's Office said Rongstad began threatening to shoot students in posts made Wednesday on Facebook. The threats triggered a series of Thursday morning alerts by the university to stay away from campus. It was later determined Rongstad never came to the Twin Cities.

Rongstad is a former mayor of Watson, a town of less than 200 people in Chippewa County, about 135 miles west of the Twin Cities. He also posted on Facebook about the standoff before it was resolved.

Early Thursday afternoon, the university issued a campus-wide all-clear message, saying the authorities had found and "contained" the suspect. "Campus can resume normal operations," the message said.

"My understanding is Chippewa County sheriff's [deputies] have this individual surrounded in his home," university spokesman Jake Ricker told the Star Tribune.

During the standoff, the Sheriff's Office called in a bomb squad from the Twin Cities, after Rongstad made threats that he had explosives inside his home. The threats turned out to be unfounded, according to Olson.

"After the apprehension, we did do a safety clearing of the building and we didn't find anything," Olson said, adding it was a "very faced paced day for myself and staff."

He noted that it took some time to confirm Rongstad was in the house to give final notice to the university that they could resume normal operations.

The Sheriff's Office did not immediately confirm details of the apparent standoff, but it earlier confirmed that Rongstad was suspected of posting the threats.

As the situation in Watson continued into the afternoon, Rongstad kept up his social media posts, including a photo of an armored tactical vehicle outside his window just before 1 p.m.

Although the Star Tribune generally does not identify suspects before they are charged, Rongstad's name and other identifying information were widely disseminated during the brief manhunt.

The university began issuing safety alerts about 7:20 a.m. The school said its police force and other agencies had sent additional officers to the campus.

"Public Safety has received a specific threat to shoot persons on the [Twin Cities] campus ... from Joseph Mark Rongstad," the initial university safety notice read.

A second alert soon after said campus operations would proceed normally, but employees were encouraged to work remotely. Students initially did not receive the same direction to avoid campus, but shortly after 10 a.m., another alert warned them to stay away.

A final alert about 1 p.m. confirmed that authorities had found Rongstad in his home in Watson and were working to arrest him.

Olson said the Sheriff's Office notified the university when the flurry of threatening posts began Wednesday.

Olson said he then had deputies "staged at the [man's] residence" should Rongstad appear. He said Rongstad's relatives were at the home as well.

Ricker said he was not aware of any connection Rongstad has to the university. The threats, he said, did not single out any individuals but rather were a "general threat of gun violence."

Olson told the Star Tribune that Rongstad's hourslong, threat-filled rant was posted on his landscape company's Facebook page.

Other postings made explicit threats to Olson and Chippewa County judges Thomas Van Hon and Keith Helgeson. In 2016, Van Hon ordered Rongstad civilly committed for six months as mentally ill and chemically dependent.

Court records show that Rongstad has a criminal history in Minnesota that includes convictions for burglary, theft, drunken driving and illicit drug possession.

In 2021, he was convicted of burglary after driving a tractor through the narthex of a Lutheran church in Watson, where he was elected mayor in 2012. A police officer found Rongstad wrapped in a blanket on the altar, according to the criminal complaint.

A judge set aside a 15-month prison sentence and ordered Rongstad jailed for 30 days and placed on probation for five years. The threats to the university violate his probationary terms.

In 2016, Rongstad was sentenced to nine months in jail after pleading guilty to burglarizing the home of a man who succeeded him as mayor. At the time, The deal also dismissed charges from when he allegedly fired a rifle through the sunroof of his truck while he was "trying to get away from the corpses that were after him," according to court documents.

The U.S. Department of Education wrote in a report released in September that "active shooter incidents represent a small subset of the possible gun violence or serious violent incidents that occur at schools.

The department recorded 18 such incidents at colleges from 2000 to 2021, though researchers noted that many schools moved online in 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Staff writers Liz Navratil and Greta Kaul contributed to this report.