Charges: Minnesota Man Tried to Stab Resident With Drill Bit During Rochester Apartment Burglary
Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News)- A Rochester man is facing felony charges after being linked to an attempted stabbing during an apartment burglary that involved a drill.
That’s according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Olmsted County Court. The alleged burglary occurred on Tuesday.
The court document says a Rochester Police Officer responded to a northwest Rochester apartment building on Tuesday. The victim told the officer a man identified as 43-year-old Charles Andrew Tewes was drilling screws into the door of his residence.
The victim said Tewes had done the same thing on Monday night while the victim was not home. The man told officers he heard someone drilling into his wooden door Tuesday morning, the complaint says.
He opened the door and saw Tewes standing in the doorway with a drill in his hand. Tewes then entered the man’s apartment and tried to stab the victim with the drill bit in the chest and neck area, the charges say.
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The man said he was able to push Tewes into the hallway and that Tewes took off on foot. Tewes was then seen on surveillance cameras running down a stairwell at the same time as the 911 call was placed by the victim, according to the court document.
Tewes was seen going into his apartment carrying a black drill, the complaint says. Responding officers found Tewes in the apartment building's parking lot. Officers detained Tewes, who denied having contact with the victim Tuesday morning.
Police found a drill bit in Tewes’s pocket and officers later found a drill similar to the one seen in the surveillance footage during a search of Tewes’s apartment. The court document says police also found screws that matched the drill bit and screw that officers saw in the victim’s door.
Tewes then said he was walking by the victim’s apartment door around 11:30 Tuesday morning and stated the victim threw a board at him. Tewes denied trying to screw the victim’s apartment door shut.
A witness told officers the victim called him Monday night to remove screws from his apartment door, according to the complaint.
Tewes was charged Wednesday with two felony counts of first-degree burglary and a count of misdemeanor fifth-degree assault.
Tewes was released without bail. He’s due back in court later this month.
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