ROSEVILLE, Minn — Days after an 88-year-old woman was killed and multiple family members were injured in a brutal attack inside a Roseville home, prosecutors want the 17-year-old suspect in the case to be prosecuted as an adult.
On Thursday, Oct. 27, the Ramsey County Attorney's office filed a juvenile petition against Matthew Hill on one count of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree assault.
Hill is accused of killing his grandmother and severely injuring his mother and older sister. Two other siblings were also injured in the attack on Oct. 25.
According to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, the department has filed a presumptive motion to certify the case in adult court.
"This is a heartbreaking case. We will do everything in our power to support this family’s healing as it proceeds through our justice system," Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a statement. "A very special thank you to the first responders in the Roseville law enforcement community for their work these past few days."
According to a statement of probable cause filed in juvenile court, Hill attacked his family members with an aluminum baseball bat and stabbed his grandmother, Patricia Maslow, in the neck.
A nurse who treated Hill's mother and sister for their severe injuries said in her opinion, they would result in "permanent disfigurement," according to court documents.
Police said the teen left the scene of the attack and was arrested near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds just after 11 a.m. According to the complaint, during an interview with police, Hill "was largely nonverbal and staring off into the distance."
He told the detective he felt like he was "going crazy," and when asked if felt someone else used his body to commit the murder and assault, Hill told investigators "I'd like to say that it is not me. I'm not very sure who me is," the documents allege.
The Tuesday morning attack prompted Ramsey County to issue a "shelter-in-place" alert that was accidentally sent out to a large swath of Ramsey County, the east metro and even some residents in the Minneapolis area. The alert said police were searching for a 17-year-old homicide suspect who was "at large."
Roseville Police and the county after tens of thousands of people received the shelter-in-place alert. The message was only supposed to reach people within a one-square-mile radius of the scene on the 1100 block of Ryan Avenue.
"The original intention is that the shelter-in-place would go out to this neighborhood since we believed he was on foot. Obviously, it went out to a much wider area," Roseville Police Chief Erika Scheider said. "We know that caused a lot of concern so we'll certainly be looking into what happened and make sure that doesn't happen again."
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