Man, 28, arrested in connection to death of brother, 7, inside Eden Prairie residence
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — A 28-year-old man is in custody in connection to the death of his 7-year-old brother inside an Eden Prairie residence Tuesday night.
Police say officers were called at about 10 p.m. to a home on the 9000 block of Lee Drive for a welfare check on a man who was said to be in crisis.
Officers arrived to find the boy unresponsive inside. He was later pronounced dead at Fairview Southdale Hospital.
The victim's older brother was arrested and is being held in the Hennepin County Jail.
Neighbors WCCO spoke with Wednesday were stunned. And unfortunately, that boy's family has been touched by tragedy before.
"Things have been slowly unfolding, you know, throughout the day, and it's sinking in now," said neighbor Beth Beutell.
Beutell and her neighbors say they woke up Wednesday morning to see police cars on their street, eventually learning their young neighbor was found dead.
"There was two of them that rode up and down the street, two brothers a lot," said neighbor Ron Szarzynski. "But just the sense of his loss. Not having now a brother to grow up with and play with."
It was nearly three years ago that the same family was mourning the loss of another member, Dolal Idd, who was killed in a shootout with Minneapolis police in December 2020 — the first person killed by MPD after George Floyd's murder.
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"The conversations I've had with other neighbors is, you know, how to offer support to them. As simple as putting a card in their mailbox now, and just knowing that as a neighborhood, we feel for them," Beutell said.
The boy's cause of death hasn't been released, and the family member hasn't been charged yet.
According to documents from the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, the family member who was arrested was on supervised release for a 2014 assault conviction, in which he attacked and robbed two people in one day. One of the victims was knocked unconscious inside a fitness center. Soon after, the suspect entered a residential home and brutally attacked a homeowner in front of his family.
WCCO-TV typically does not identify those arrested until they are formally charged.