MINNEAPOLIS — Hundreds of documents in the case involving Minnesota State Patrol Trooper Ryan Londregan were released by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, including an interview with the trooper who was attempting to arrest Ricky Cobb II.
Londregan was charged with second-degree murder after he shot and killed Ricky Cobb II when he was trying to flee a traffic stop with Trooper Brett Seide halfway inside the car.
“I said I was going to make a driver-side approach, that’s because I would be the arresting officer,” Seide told investigators. “It appeared he was not going to get out of the vehicle and to mitigate that threat I asked him to give me the keys.”
Seide also told investigators what he remembered about being dragged inside Cobb’s car.
"All I remember is trying to keep my balance," he recalled. "I could feel the vehicle pulling me. The speed became too fast, I lost my footing, I hit the ground. I saw ground and I saw sky and then and I stood up and I could see the vehicle continuing down the roadway."
Seide was also questioned about his training and whether he felt Londregan's decision to shoot Cobb was justified.
"Would you agree that given your position there was at least a risk?" investigators asked.
"It was possible, but if Trooper Londregan did not use force to stop this threat the outcome would have been worse,” Seide responded.
The interview with Seide was one of 15 interviews released, along with more than 1,300 pages of documents, hundreds of photos and several hours of video.
Among the interviews released were two with Sgt. Jason Halvorson, a use-of-force coordinator for the Minnesota State Patrol Training and Development Section who was used in the original complaint against Londregan. Sgt. Halvorson later claimed that senior Assistant County Attorney Josh Larson and Deputy Hennepin County Attorney Mark Osler lied by omission by just using part of a hypothetical scenario they posed to him.
“The author of the complaint (signed by Osler) has cherry-picked one sentence from a 37-page interview transcript and excluded critical facts and context thereby purposefully misleading the reader of the complaint,” Sgt. Halvorson wrote in the court filing.
The murder charge was eventually dismissed after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she was presented with new pieces of evidence that would have made it impossible to get a conviction.
In one of the interviews, Halvorson is asked about training and techniques state troopers are taught. Sgt. Halvorson said they set up a number of different scenarios so troopers know to respond.
The documents also shared insight from Trooper Garrett Erickson, who was also at the scene. He told investigators, “I was concerned that Trooper Seide was in an extremely vulnerable position. I feared for Trooper Seide's life because he could fall out and be run over."
KARE 11 is still going through all the files from the Minnesota BCA.