Police: Dispute over parking spot led to meat-cleaver assault
Robert S. Meyer
Two men are facing felony charges after a dispute over a parking spot erupted into fisticuffs – and an attack with a meat cleaver – outside a Farmington apartment complex earlier this month.
Robert S. Meyer, 18, was charged by the Dakota County Attorney’s Office last week with second-degree assault and criminal damage to property.
His alleged accomplice, 27-year-old Andrew D. Jensen, is accused of providing Meyer with the butcher knife used in the incident, and he’s been charged with second-degree assault (aiding and abetting).
The criminal complaint gives the following account:
Police were called to the apartments on the 4300 block of 220th Street at about 9 p.m. July 13 on a report of an assault with a knife.
There, the male victim told officers that a short time earlier he’d arrived home and found that someone had parked in his assigned parking spot.
The victim reported that he honked his horn once, as is customary at the apartment complex when someone’s parked in your assigned space, and shortly thereafter a man he didn’t know – later identified as Meyer – came outside.
Asked to move his vehicle, Meyer became belligerent and began throwing punches, grazing the victim’s face with one of them. A fight ensued, but ended when Meyer’s girlfriend came out of the apartments and told him to stop.
However, as Meyer was walking back toward the apartments, a man on crutches – later identified as Jensen – handed him a large butcher knife, the complaint said. Meyer ran at the victim, and the victim fled on foot, getting about a block away before Meyer caught up with him.
Meyer tried to slash the victim with the knife, swinging it at him twice but missing both times by about an inch. Meyer’s girlfriend again intervened, asking him to stop, and he walked away clutching the butcher knife.
The ugly incident wasn’t over, though.
As Meyer walked by the victim’s car, he smashed the handle of the knife against the vehicle, putting dents in the hood and passenger door, according to the complaint. The victim’s girlfriend and infant child were in the car at the time.
Police located Meyer hiding in a closet in Jensen’s apartment. He was arrested and booked into the Dakota County Jail, where he remained as of Monday afternoon.
Meyer, who is a Farmington resident but does not live at the apartments on 220th Street where the incident occurred, faces a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine if convicted of the felony assault charge. Jensen also faces seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine if convicted.
