A Minnesota man stands accused of murder and attempted murder after he stabbed his next-door neighbor to death and seriously wounded the man’s teenage son.
A criminal complaint says that Jonathon Michael Kaupa, 31, escaped the third floor apartments using a rope over the balcony and took a rideshare from the scene, telling the driver the bloody viscera on his cell phone was “fish guts,” KSTP reported.
The driver said Kaupa told him he was going to his parents’ home in St. Paul and was “sweaty” and “underdressed” for the weather. He was also carrying a bag with bloody clothes and a rope inside.
Police found the 45-year-old man, a maintenance worker for the Equinox Apartments, and teenage boy early Saturday morning with stab wounds. The man was pronounced dead on the scene, and the boy had been stabbed multiple times in the chest, neck, and head.
Law&Crime identified the victims as a father and his son.
The boy identified Kaupa as the attacker, saying that he lived across the hall, according to KSTP. He said that he recalled hearing power tools out in the hall early in the morning, and h and his father went out to tell Kaupa to stop. Instead, Kaupa attacked them with a “sharp weapon like a screwdriver,” the boy said.
The boy was stabbed about 20 times, and his father pulled Kaupa off. The boy scrambled inside the apartment and called 911.
While police were investigating, Kaupa’s father arrived at the apartments and told police his son had arrived and borrowed his Mercedes Benz. He may have gone to the family cabin in Two Harbors, he said.
Later in the morning, St. Louis County deputies spotted the missing Benz in Duluth. Kaupa, driving the vehicle, fled a traffice stop but crashed and was arrested.
Kaupa is being held at the Ramsey County Jail on a $5 million bond. He is charged with murder and attempted murder.
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[Featured image: Jonathon Michael Kaupa/Ramsey County Adult Detention Center]
