MINNEAPOLIS _ St. Paul police say they were immediately skeptical of a St. Catherine University security officer's claims that he was shot by a nonexistent black suspect on campus Tuesday night before he admitted that the gun accidentally went off and he made up the story to avoid getting fired.
Brent P. Ahlers, 25, who is white, was arrested Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of filing a false report with police. He was treated for a shoulder wound, then booked into the Ramsey County jail and released.
Messages were left with Ahlers seeking comment about his version of events Tuesday on the St. Paul campus. The university said he was placed on paid leave from his job.
Ahlers told police Wednesday the gun went off accidentally in the woods and that he lied about being shot by someone else. Given that police have only Ahlers' account for why the gun went off, Police Sgt. Mike Ernster said that "we didn't have enough to charge him with reckless discharge of a firearm," a more serious count.
He told police he made up the story because he was afraid of losing his job for bringing his own gun to work, Ernster added. The school does not arm its security personnel, the sergeant said. Ernster said he doesn't know whether Ahlers has a state-issued permit to carry a firearm in public.
Emergency dispatch audio described the supposed suspect as a black man with a "short Afro" in a navy blue sweatshirt, according to the Police Clips website. Soon to follow were social media postings of the description.
Ernster said authorities did not disclose the description provided by Ahlers because other information he provided about the shooting wasn't adding up.
"The description that we had that was sent across the police radio was provided by (Ahlers)," Ernster said. "I think early on, some of the facts of this case weren't adding up for us. ... We didn't have the confidence in the description to act on it."
Ernster said that information sent over police audio based on callers' observations is raw and not vetted. "When information is validated by multiple independent sources ... then it becomes more of a valid description," he said.
Ahlers' fabricated account "had basically 1,800 students held captive in their dorm rooms at St. Catherine's," Ernster said Wednesday night, "and it had residents of the Mac-Groveland and Highland Park communities fearing they would be hurt in their homes."
The sergeant said 55 police officers and four K-9s, as well as a State Patrol aircraft, joined in the search for a supposed suspect Tuesday night. Police conducted a building-by-building search and advised people to stay indoors as they searched for the shooter.
Ahlers has been St. Catherine security officer for 15 months, with no prior reports of misconduct and had undergone a thorough background check, university President Becky Roloff said in a statement posted on the school's website.
He holds an associate degree in law enforcement and completed law enforcement skills training at Hennepin Technical College, Roloff said.
"While we are distressed and saddened that this incident occurred," the president's statement continued, "we are relieved that no other members of the community were injured."
