(POLK COUNTY, MINN) – Officers will not face charges following a deadly January 9, 2024, shooting in Polk County.
Polk County Attorney Greg Widseth announced Friday afternoon that, based on his review, there is no basis for the filing of criminal charges against officers involved in the attempt to arrest Lucas Gilbertson. That includes the East Grand Forks Police Sergeant who shot Gilbertson, Aeisso Schrage. Schrage has been a member of the East Grand Forks Police Department since 2005.
“In this case, there is no doubt that East Grand Forks Police Department Sergeant Aeisso Schrage used deadly force when he shot Lucas Gilbertson on January 9, 2024, in rural Polk County. There also is no question that, as a result of being shot, Lucas Gilbertson passed away thereafter in an operating room at Altru Hospital in Grand Forks, North Dakota,” Widseth said in his announcement. “There finally is no question that the only officer on scene who used deadly force towards Lucas Gilbertson was Sergeant Schrage. The issue then is whether an objectively reasonable officer would have believed, based upon the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time and without the benefit of hindsight, that deadly force was necessary to protect himself or another from death or great bodily harm. In viewing all of the evidence in this case, I conclude that the use of deadly force by Sergeant Schrage was justified and immediately necessary in this case based upon the totality of circumstances.”
Widseth lists the reasons for the justification for the use of force as being because it “was in the line of duty, objectively reasonable based on the totality of the circumstances known to him at the time, and necessary to protect himself or others from death or great bodily harm caused by Gilbertson.”
