Eden Prairie man jailed on suspicion of suffocating 7-year-old brother
An Eden Prairie man is jailed on suspicion of second-degree murder in the death of his 7-year-old brother. Police say the child appears to have been suffocated.
Eden Prairie police went to a home on Lee Drive around 10 p.m. Tuesday after a man called 911 and told the dispatcher that he'd been hearing voices, hallucinating and not taking his medications, and that he was scared because he "just did something" to someone else “for the greater good.”
According to a search warrant for the home filed in Hennepin County court, officers met the man, 27, outside his house, where he raised his hands and told police that he wanted to turn himself in.
Inside the house, police found two sleeping children who were unharmed. But a third child, whom the Hennepin County Medical Examiner identified as Abdullahi Adod Gelle, had no pulse and was not breathing.
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Police, firefighters and paramedics attempted lifesaving measures on Abdullahi, but doctors at M Health Fairview Hospital in Edina later pronounced the boy dead. A physician told police that the child had light swelling around his neck that appeared to be consistent with a smothering death.
A list of items that investigators removed from the house does not include any weapons, but officers recovered at least nine pillows, multiple blankets and bedsheets, items of children’s clothing and prescription medication bottles.
The suspect was hospitalized for a mental health evaluation then arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder. He remains jailed as of Thursday afternoon. Because he has not been charged, MPR News is not naming him.
An investigator writes in the warrant that there’s probable cause to believe that the suspect killed Abdullahi “by strangulation and/or suffocation then called police to turn himself in.”
Court records show that the man suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was civilly committed multiple times, spent time in prison for assault and had recently been under the legal guardianship of his older sister.