Wednesday, November 19, 2025
The St. Cloud Police Department is confirming one person died in a crash while fleeing an officer Monday night near St. Cloud State University. According to a press release, at approximately 10:41, an officer was on routine patrol going eastbound on University Drive near Killian Boulevard, when he saw a car traveling westbound at a high rate of speed. The officer’s radar indicated the driver was going 62 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an-hour zone. The officer tried to stop the driver, identified as a 41-year-old Mohamud Yusuf of St. Cloud, but he sped up, and the officer gave chase. The driver continued west across the University Bridge and, as he reached the west end, entered the eastbound lane, at which point the officer immediately attempted to terminate the pursuit. The man continued driving at a high rate of speed and went through the roundabout at 5th Avenue, hitting a parked pickup truck and a light pole in the parking lot of an apartment building at the southwest corner of the intersection. Life-saving measures were taken at the scene, but Yusuf was pronounced dead. The 53-year-old St. Cloud man, Mark Weber, who was in the pickup truck was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Everything was captured on the squad car’s dash camera and body camera. Why the driver fled is under investigation. However, he was driving with a canceled license and was considered a threat to public safety due to past driving conduct. The intersection was temporarily closed to allow Xcel Energy to repair damage to the light pole and the power lines that were damaged as a result of the crash. This case remains under active investigation by the St. Cloud Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit and the Minnesota State Patrol.
Three City of Clear Lake employees allegedly stole tens of thousands of dollars through payroll and city credit cards. Dustin Luhning, Chad Koren, and Kari Koren are all charged with theft and embezzlement of public funds. According to the criminal complaint, Kari Koren was the City Clerk and oversaw the day-to-day financial operations for the city. Paystubs showed she was overpaid by $14,000 and financial records showed she made tens of thousands of dollars worth of personal purchases on city credit cards. Chad Koren, a city firefighter, is also accused of making personal purchases with city credit cards totaling over $4,000. The criminal complaint states that Kari Koren told the city council she did not intentionally misuse public funds, and that there was either a software issue or there were times she forgot to reimburse the city for personal purchases. Chad Koren allegedly told authorities that money was tight and things snowballed. Luhning, who was the public works director, is also accused of using city credit cards and being paid for over 120 hours he didn't work. Between the three, more than $200,000 was allegedly embezzled between November 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023.
The Stearns County Attorney's Office has charged 34-year-old Dakota Olson after he allegedly threatened another man with a knife. St. Cloud Police were called to the area of 5th Avenue South and 3rd Street South at around 2:15 a.m. on Saturday. A man told officers that he was walking home from work on 5th Avenue South when a car pulled into the Chipotle parking lot and blocked his path. The victim said an older white man exited the vehicle, walked around to the front of the car, pulled a knife from his waistband, and threatened to kill him. The victim said he ran southbound and called 911. Police used surveillance footage to get a description and a license plate on the vehicle. Court records show the victim was shown a police lineup and picked out Olson as the suspect. Olson was arrested in a car matching the description and license plate the following day. The charges don't indicate a reason behind the altercation.
Minnesota residents will have one final chance in 2025 to explore all 73 state parks or recreation areas for free later this month. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says late November is a particularly good time for bird watchers as the leaves are gone and animals have fewer opportunities to avoid interested eyes. Biking, hiking, and photography are other good options. Tying into Free Park Day on November 28th, there will be a naturalist-led hike at Wild River State Park, a scavenger hunt throughout Gooseberry Falls State Park, and a reptile demonstration at Lake Maria State Park, the closest park to St. Cloud, located in Wright County near Monticello. The DNR offers one Free Park Day in each season to showcase the beauty of state parks year-round. The dates for 2026 have already been set: Monday, January 19th; Saturday, April 25th; Saturday, June 13th; and Friday, November 27th.
A widely used Internet infrastructure company said that it has resolved an issue that led to outages impacting users of everything from ChatGPT and the online game, “League of Legends,” to the New Jersey Transit system early Tuesday. Around 10 a.m. ET, Tuesday Cloudflare said it was “continuing to monitor for errors to ensure all services are back to normal.” Others platforms that experienced outages Tuesday included the social media site X, Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, and the Moody’s credit ratings service. Moody’s website displayed an Error Code 500 and instructed individuals to visit Cloudflare’s website for more information. New Jersey Transit said parts of its digital services including njtransit.com, may be temporarily unavailable or slow to load. Cloudflare, based in The San Francisco, provides internet infrastructure that protects websites from online threats and helps them run more smoothly. Last month Microsoft had to deploy a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services. The tech company wrote on its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage. And Amazon experienced a massive outage of its cloud computing service in October. The company resolved the issue, but the outage took down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.
Tuesday, members of the Little Falls Attractions were on KLTF Party Line. Linden Hill will have the 12 days of Christmas theme of Christmas at the Mansion's November 28th through December 7th, tickets can be purchased online or call 320-616-5580 for info or at the event. The Minnesota Fishing Museum will be having Christmas Tree Lane each of the days November 28th-December 7th with trees, wreaths and baskets to bid on, Santa will be there on the weekends and more for tickets call the museum at 616-2011 or check their website or you can pay at the door of the events. The Nutcracker event will again be at the Charles A. Weyerhauser Museum which houses the Morrison County Historical Society, which will be open on Wednesday through Sunday during the event days and free of charge. This year the fourth event will be at the Meadow View Manor west of Little Falls from December 3rd to 7th only during those days. Come and view the manor of Christmas items and hear about the previous owner, that event is also free. Questions can be directed to each of the sites or full details by clicking on this link.
Tuesday morning Scott Herold of Pierz Cross Country team spoke on KLTF for the Turkey Trot 2025 fundraiser for their club on Thanksgiving Day at 7:30am registration at the high school in Pierz. You can get more information by contacting Pierz Community Education at the school or also Scott Herold.
National Weather News: Two storms loom over next week’s Thanksgiving holiday with the potential to cause delays during the busiest travel period of the year, when close to 82 million Americans are expected to take to the road, rail or sky. The first storm system is expected to develop next Monday, November 24, and bring rain to the southern Plains as it tracks into the Southeast and potentially the mid-Atlantic or Northeast through Tuesday. According to AAA, next Tuesday afternoon is supposed to be one of the most congested periods on the roads before Thanksgiving Day itself. While the exact track of this first system is still coming into focus, long-range forecasts appear to be in good agreement that the South will see several days of rain which could cause delays at airports like Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Meanwhile, a second storm system will bring rain and colder conditions to the Pacific Northwest next Monday and is expected to dive across the country by midweek. An area from Missouri to Texas will likely see some rain on Wednesday into Thanksgiving Day, with the potential for snow where colder air is able to take hold. Minnesota weather calls for stagnant weather over the next 5-7 days with a chance of rain and snow southern half Tuesday, and a better chance of rain changing to snow Thanksgiving Night and Friday the 28th but again that is a ways off.
Death Notices: Paul Norberg, age 80 of Harding.
Weather: Cloudy skies on high 42, chance of drizzle tonight low 35. Thursday cloudy in the morning then sunny later in the day, high 42, clear skies at night low around 25. Friday sunny and a bit breezy, high near 40, low around 20. Saturday sunny skies high 50, low 32. Sunday sunny skies, high of 48, low near 26.
Sports: The Minnesota Twins' new coaching staff under manager Derek Shelton includes six new members: Keith Beauregard (hitting coach), Toby Gardenhire (major league field coordinator), Mark Hallberg (bench coach), LaTroy Hawkins (bullpen coach), Mike Rabelo (assistant bench coach), and Grady Sizemore (first base coach). The team also retained several coaches, with Ramon Borrego shifting to third base coach. Shelton replaced Rocco Baldelli after this past season and takes over as new manager. Thursday night football tomorrow is Buffalo at Houston 6:30pm on AM960 KLTF.