Unlicensed driver charged with murder in killing of Uptown protester
An unlicensed motorist was charged Wednesday with murder for driving an SUV into a vehicle parked to protect protesters in Uptown and killing a 31-year-old woman.
Nicholas D. Kraus, 35, of St. Paul, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree intentional murder and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the crash late Sunday that killed Deona M. Knajdek, of Minneapolis, and injured three other protesters.
The murder count presents a far more serious allegation against Kraus, rather than the more typical count of criminal vehicular homicide.
The charges come on the day that Knajdek, a project manager for a vulnerable adult service provider and a mother to two girls, would have turned 32 years old.
Kraus remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail ahead of a court appearance that has yet to be scheduled. Court records do not list an attorney for him.
Kraus' criminal history in Minnesota includes five convictions for drunken driving, most recently in 2016 in Anoka County and as far back as 2008. He's also been convicted numerous times for driving without a valid license, and for assault, failure to have auto insurance and giving police a false name.
At the time of Sunday night's crash, Kraus' license status was canceled, and it has been that way since shortly after a drunken driving conviction in 2013, according to state officials.
Knajdek was among protesters who have been gathering at W. Lake Street and S. Girard Avenue since shortly after Winston Boogie Smith Jr. was fatally shot by law enforcement on June 3 during an attempt by a U.S. Marshals Service task force to arrest him in a parking ramp.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Smith fired a gun from his vehicle. An unidentified woman who was in the car with Smith said she never saw him with a weapon, her attorneys said last week. Authorities have said that no body or dash camera or surveillance footage is available in the case.
A court document filed early this week by police backs up the contention of witnesses that Kraus was speeding and showed no signs of slowing down as he neared the protest barrier while heading east on Lake Street. He struck Knajdek's vehicle, which then struck her, according to witnesses and police.
Video from a city-operated camera shows Kraus' 2-ton SUV "continues through the intersection at a high rate of speed [and] the driver does not appear to hit the brakes in the footage," reads a search warrant affidavit filed by police for court permission to collect a blood sample for testing to determine whether he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash.
The filing also revealed that Kraus was acting "in a bizarre manner" moments after the crash, telling one officer that his name was Jesus Christ or movie director Tim Burton and "that he has been a carpenter for 2,000 years."
Kraus was "answering questions that were irrelevant" and wanted an officer to "tell his dead mother that he doesn't like her," the court document continued.
The officer summed up his filing that based on his observations, "I believe the male is under the influence of an intoxicating substance."
Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482
