MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The Hennepin County medical examiner’s office is identifying the woman found stabbed to death in a Richfield parking lot. She’s 22-year-old Tobista Beyena Mokonnen of Richfield.
Hennepin County prosecutors charged her 24-year-old brother, Guuci Beyena Mokonnen, with first-degree murder in her death on Tuesday. He remained in the county jail Wednesday, with bail set at $2 million.
Both the victim and the killer are natives of Ethiopia.
The medical examiner says Tobista was found about 9:30 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot of the Buena Vista apartments.
The criminal complaint filed in the case says she was holding an eight-month-old child, who wasn’t harmed in the attack.
Her brother allegedly confessed, telling investigators that he was angry his sister wouldn’t allow him to live with her, which led him to become homeless.
If convicted, Mokonnen faces life in prison.
Wanted to kill sister for 3 Years
A man who said he has been thinking about killing his sister for three years was charged with first-degree murder for her death.
Prosecutors charged Guuci Beyena Mokonnen, 24, with the stabbing death of his sister in a parking lot of the Buena Vista Apartments on East 78th Street in Richfield on May 2.
According to the criminal complaint, two people found the victim, lying in a parking lot, holding an 8-month-old child. The witnesses said they called police after they saw the woman’s eyes moving back and forth and heard her make gurgling noises. The child was crying.
When police arrived, the woman was surrounded by a pool of blood and was bleeding from the head and neck. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.
Officers took the child, who was not injured, to Hennepin County Medical Center. The child has since been released to family members.
A short time after the victim was found, police said Mokonnen phoned them from the Mall of America in Bloomington, saying he had killed his sister. When officers picked him up, they noticed what appeared to be dried blood on his hands, coat and pants.
Mokonnen told police he was angry with his sister because she wouldn’t let him live with her. He said that because of that, he became homeless and unemployed. He had been staying with his brother, and he took a knife from his brother’s apartment, the criminal complaint said.
Police found a knife that appeared to have blood on it in a storm sewer on East 77th Street. Mokonnen told police he walked to 77th Street and then to Portland and threw the knife down a storm drain.