Before killing first responders, Burnsville shooter used legal system against his accuser
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Noemi Torres was confident the custody case would go in her favor.
She loved her three kids. After she separated from her then-boyfriend, Shannon Gooden, in 2016, she says she took care of their kids and made sure they got to spend time with their father every weekend.
But she also warned a Ramsey County judge of Gooden’s abusive history toward her. A court official responsible for representing the interests of their children also learned of allegations that Gooden had abused one of their kids.
Torres thought those facts would have been enough to at least get equal parenting time with the children. Instead, she came out of a two-year custody battle getting to see her kids less than a third of the time. The court also ordered her to pay thousands of dollars in child support and legal fees to Gooden.
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Torres knew he was a manipulative man. But the court system didn’t see it until it was too late.
“I feel like they could have done a better investigation,” she said.
On Feb. 18, 2024, Gooden shot and killed three first responders in front of his house in Burnsville before killing himself. Seven children who Gooden parented, including three he shared with Torres, were in the house during the police standoff.
“They’re the ones that (are) scarred for the rest of their lives,” Torres said.
An MPR News investigation shows how Minnesota’s family court system favored Gooden despite his violent history. He was able to manipulate that system because of his substantial income. That financial advantage allowed him to hire a lawyer, while Torres had to represent herself.
It also helped him convince two judges that he was the more stable parent, with a house in the suburbs and reliable transportation. Gooden then used the courts to control, harass and financially drain Torres, before subjecting their children to the unimaginable trauma of the deadly police standoff.
The story provides a window into the challenges of the state’s family court system, where the majority of cases have at least one party not represented by a lawyer.
The two judges assigned to the custody case, Judge Mark Ireland and Judge Thomas Gilligan, declined to comment. Gooden’s attorney from the custody battle also didn’t respond to messages for this story.
Mother of three of Gooden’s kids left after 10 years of abuse
Torres met Gooden in 2006 when she was 22. Four months into their relationship, Torres found out she was pregnant with their first child. That was around the same time Gooden’s abuse began, according to Torres.
She recalls an argument they had in which Gooden slammed her against a wall and then slapped her.
In another instance, she said Gooden threatened to punch her in the stomach while she was pregnant. Torres flew back home to New York to stay with her family for a few months after. During that time, she and Gooden wrote letters to each other.
At one point, Torres said Gooden was writing to her from jail following a felony conviction for second-degree assault with a knife in 2008. That resulted in his gun rights being revoked.
“We was just constantly talking, and he was in jail talking, ‘I’m not going to do that no more,’ making it sound all good. And I believed it,” Torres said.
So she came back to Minnesota to raise her first child with Gooden. Torres planned to finish culinary school and pursue her dream of opening a small Dominican restaurant.
But Torres, who is from New York, felt alone in Minnesota without her family. She contemplated going back home but felt it would have disappointed her parents. They expected her to follow through with her plans for school.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Torres said. “I don’t have no money. I don’t have nothing.”
Torres said Gooden abused her physically, sexually and verbally throughout their 10-year relationship. She felt she was “constantly walking on eggshells” around him.
And although she often thought about leaving him, she decided she would stay until their youngest turned 18.
“I felt like I would have been selfish if I would have took the kids from him,” Torres said. “Then my kids wouldn’t have both parents in the house, and I just felt like I didn’t want to do that.”
Torres briefly left Gooden in 2014 and left for good in 2016. She left after a fight at their Lakeville home when Torres said Gooden grabbed a knife, cut her clothes and swiped his foot under hers, causing her to fall down the stairs. She was scared he would kill her.
Torres fled with their two sons and daughter to a domestic violence shelter in Eagan. She lived there for two months before she was able to find her own place.
Torres says her daughter was the reason she left Gooden.
“I don’t want her to be like, ‘My dad is this way, he treats my mom this way, so this is how I’m supposed to get treated.’ Absolutely not,” she said. “I don’t want her to think that that’s normal. Because I didn’t grow up with my mom or dad fighting each other, or my dad putting hands on my mom or anything like that.”
Power, control plays out in court between abuser and survivor
After Torres left Gooden in 2016, she said they agreed she’d take the kids during the week and Gooden would have them on weekends. The deal worked until July 2020, when Gooden refused to give back her 9-year-old daughter at a custody swap.
“I called Burnsville Police Department, and they was like they couldn’t really do anything about it because he’s the father of the children,” Torres said.
She eventually found a pro bono attorney who helped her get an emergency order for protection against Gooden.
“I am very afraid for my safety with him because of our past and because of his current actions,” Torres wrote in her request for the order.
An order for protection is a common first step for many domestic abuse victims who share children with an abusive partner and want to get away from the abuse, according to Erin Osborne.
At the time MPR News interviewed her, Osborne was an attorney at Central Minnesota Legal Services and worked with clients living in poverty who were victims of domestic violence. She now works at the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, which noted her comments in this story do not represent the agency.
A protective order can help someone keep their abuser from contacting them and provide temporary custody or child support.
“To be able to remove yourself from that situation when there are children involved, you are going to need some additional protections to help you set those boundaries,” Osborne said. “Maybe to have temporary sole custody, even if it’s not permanent — just to be able to get away.”
In many cases, Osborne has seen an abusive parent refuse to give the child back. Osborne said that forces legal action to establish child custody.
“This is the way that power and control can happen in a relationship where there’s domestic abuse,” Osborne said. “It doesn’t go away when the relationship ends, especially when there are children involved.”
She added that abusive exes can use the children to exert pressure on their victims by refusing to return them or by extracting information from them to use in custody disputes.
When Torres applied for a protective order in 2020, she wrote that Gooden was using the children “as a way to continue to manipulate and abuse me.”
The court initially gave Torres custody of her three kids, ages 12, 11 and 9, because she and Gooden weren’t married and he hadn’t demonstrated he was the father yet. But it eventually ruled that her allegations of abuse were “not proved.” Gooden fought back, demanding full custody, and for the next two years they were locked in a battle over their children.
Son reports Gooden hit him with a belt
The court appointed a guardian ad litem to advocate for the best interests of the children. Guardians ad litem, some of whom are unpaid volunteers, evaluate the children’s relationships with the parents and make recommendations to judges based on what they observe in interviews and home visits.
During a visit to Gooden’s home, one of Torres and Gooden’s sons told the guardian ad litem his father beat him with a belt regularly, according to the guardian ad litem’s report to the court.
The report also said his siblings confirmed that allegation.
“I am concerned about the children’s report to me that (the boy) is disciplined with a belt, pushing and shoving while at Mr. Gooden’s home,” the guardian ad litem wrote. “Mr. Gooden has agreed to refrain from using physical discipline on the children.”
Gooden eventually admitted to the guardian ad litem during her investigation that he “spanked” his son on one occasion because he was misbehaving.
This wasn’t the first time Gooden was accused of hurting the boy. Dakota County Child Protection conducted investigations in 2016 and 2017 after the same son reported to school officials that his father hurt him on two occasions. The agency found a mark about the size of a quarter on the boy’s body each time, but the boy, who is hard of hearing and diagnosed with autism, could not explain why Gooden hurt him.
Child Protective Services can make a maltreatment finding when it determines abuse is more likely than not to have happened, which is a much lower standard than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal cases.
In spite of that, the agency closed its assessments “without findings” after Gooden denied using physical discipline and promised not to use it. Torres was aware of the assessments but didn’t think Gooden was abusing the son at the time.
Minnesota law allows parents and guardians to hit their children. It crosses into abuse when it causes serious injury or involves the actual or threatened use of a weapon.
Osborne said when there are abuse allegations that can’t be proved or don’t result in criminal charges, family courts struggle with how much weight to give to the allegations.
“But that doesn’t mean there’s no cause for concern,” she said. “I think that’s something that the courts struggle with is what is the appropriate precaution to take in that situation if there’s not a legal determination that this happened, but there’s still cause for concern.”
Once the child protection cases were closed and the guardian ad litem completed her report, the state’s inquiry into the allegations against Gooden ended. The Minnesota Guardian ad Litem Board and Ramsey County Child Protective Services declined to comment on Torres’ case because of privacy laws.
‘I felt hopeless’: Torres overwhelmed by court process
Unlike in criminal cases, there is no constitutional right to an attorney in civil court. That means victims of domestic abuse face barriers in accessing legal services, and many go through the court system without an attorney.
In Minnesota, about three-quarters of family court cases statewide have at least one self-represented litigant according to the state’s Judicial Branch. National data shows that people of color are less likely to have a lawyer than white people.
“Judges take all cases and litigants seriously, whether the litigant is self-represented or has retained an attorney,” Minnesota Judicial Branch spokesperson Kim Pleticha said. “Custody determinations are made based on the merits of each individual case.”
She also pointed to a self-help center that provides resources to self-represented litigants.
Torres initially had a lawyer for the custody case who eventually quit because Torres couldn’t afford the legal bills. At the time, she said she was working as a line cook for a Minneapolis food truck.
Torres tried to get pro bono representation but said attorneys wouldn’t take her case because it was too far in. Osborne said legal aid organizations don’t have the capacity to take on all of the demand for their services, especially if there are only a few weeks to prepare for a trial.
“That’s when I felt hopeless,” Torres said.
Torres ended up representing herself in court. Gooden, who earned more than $100,000 a year doing auto body work, was able to hire a lawyer.
She hoped being honest in court would be enough. But she was overwhelmed.
“So basically I had no evidence turned in,” Torres said. “I had no witnesses turned in. I had nothing. I had one person.”
Torres’ longtime friend Alicia Forside testified in court that Torres was a loving mother who would do anything for her kids.
The pair met in 2015 and became close after sharing similar experiences as young moms in abusive relationships. During the custody battle, Forside said she and her two kids often babysat Torres’ children when Torres had to work.
“Noemi will give you the shirt off her back,” Forside told MPR News. “She’s more than a best friend. She’s become my sister. She’s the only one I’ve ever trusted with my children. She cares for my kids like she cares for hers.”
Meanwhile, Gooden had more than 300 pages of evidence and a handful of witnesses to testify on his behalf. Torres didn’t have evidence to back up her claims of Gooden being abusive, because she never called the police on Gooden. She said she was scared he’d become more violent toward her if she had.
National data shows many domestic violence incidents go unreported because victims are fearful of retaliation from their partners, fearful they won’t be believed or fearful of how police would react.
Ireland declined to comment about the case, citing the state’s code of conduct for judges.
Pleticha, the Minnesota Judicial Branch spokesperson, said the judge’s written rulings speak for themselves.
In his 2022 order, Ireland acknowledged the allegations that Gooden was abusive and the guardian ad litem’s concerns that his behavior would escalate. But the judge concluded that the “father is in a better position to provide for the physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual and other needs of the Children.” The order explained that Gooden was employed, had suitable housing and reliable transportation and “prioritizes structure and routine.”
Because of that, Gooden’s Burnsville home was designated as the primary residence for the three children.
“In contrast, mother’s life is less stable at the moment and she is also in the midst of addressing her own mental health and chemical health issues,” Ireland wrote in March 2022. The guardian ad litem had reported Torres was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, which Torres said was due in part to her problems with Gooden.
Since the kids had significant medical, mental health and educational needs, the court favored minimizing transitions — further lessening Torres’ parenting time.
“I can tell you that judges agonize over these decisions,” said Patrick Burns, a Minneapolis-based attorney not involved in the Torres case. “They see and hear and decide things that just blow your mind. My experience with some of the stuff, it still affects me today, and it happened 20 years ago.”
Judges have a duty to listen to both sides and weigh the evidence as they seek to answer a difficult question, Burns explained: What is in the best interest of the children?
That’s especially challenging in the face of abuse allegations, Burns said, noting that the rules of evidence are “pretty unforgiving” for people representing themselves. But Burns said most judges go out of their way to help people who don’t have lawyers.
“They work really hard to get it right,” he said. “The court is supposed to make a hard decision without much in the way of evidence, because it’s a he said, she said.”
Forside was sitting next to Torres in the courtroom when the judge ruled against her.
“She just felt like her whole world was going to be taken away and it showed on her face,” Forside recalled. “She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak. Her words couldn’t come out.”
Torres loses parenting time to her abuser
Torres felt dejected during the two-year court battle.
“I just felt like he was gonna keep winning,” Torres said. “Everybody would give me all kinds of advice but it was just like, I don’t have the money for it. I can’t even afford a lawyer.”
Throughout the custody battle, Gooden alleged Torres was a bad parent. He brought up Torres’ daily cannabis use and concerns about her mental health. Gooden also pointed out instances in which Torres left the kids unsupervised or with adults he said were unfit to watch them and was not present during pickup time at bus stops.
Both parents were subjected to random drug testing, and Torres had to complete outpatient treatment for chemical dependency.
Torres told the court she wanted equal parenting time but struggled to negotiate it without a lawyer. Despite past allegations of child abuse and domestic violence against Gooden, the guardian ad litem suggested a schedule giving Gooden slightly more overnights with the kids than Torres.
Ireland’s custody order went even further. He awarded Gooden 260 overnights and Torres 105.
Torres didn’t give up. She saved a few hundred dollars to appeal the judge’s decision, but the court rejected her appeal because of missing paperwork. Torres said she didn’t find out the appeal fell through until months later.
The parenting schedule was always rocky with Gooden, according to Torres. After her car was stolen, Torres had to come up with a way to pick up the kids more than 20 miles away, sometimes taking Ubers.
A 2018 analysis of child custody disputes in Wisconsin — where one parent was eventually convicted of physically abusing the other — found family courts awarded joint custody 50 percent of the time. The authors of the analysis, who were associated with the group End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, concluded that a 2003 law designed to prevent domestic abuse victims from having to share custody with their abusers was ineffective.
Out of the 361 cases examined in the study, only 27 percent of the court orders mentioned the history of domestic abuse.
“I think there’s a very strong bias in favor of children having a relationship with both parents,” Osborne said. “The perception is that all you have to do is allege abuse, and then you get everything in family court, and it’s 100 percent not true.”
The 2003 Wisconsin law discourages courts from awarding custody to a parent who has a pattern or serious incidents of domestic violence.
Minnesota has a similar law that tells courts to presume joint custody is not in the children’s interest when domestic violence has occurred. In both states, the presumption against giving domestic abusers custody is “rebuttable,” meaning courts have the discretion to award custody to the abuser based on some mitigating factors.
Another study from George Washington University of more than 4,000 cases over 10 years across the United States found mothers alleging abuse by fathers lost custody of their children 25 percent of the time.
The authors noted that they were unable to determine if there were other factors that influenced those custody decisions, but they theorized that mothers may have been “penalized” for raising abuse allegations that judges didn’t believe.
June Carbone, a family law professor at the University of Minnesota, said judges can sometimes view allegations of abuse as “bad faith” attempts to gain the upper hand in an ugly custody battle when there is not much evidence to back them up.
“If you were saying that a parent shouldn’t have extended contact with the child, that is a declaration of war,” Carbone said. ”Judges don’t like that.”
The legal default, she explained, is to award parents shared custody. Mothers then have to show the allegations are egregious and can be substantiated, which is no small feat. Carbone also said it can be a double-edged sword.
“You get painted as the unfriendly parent who’s undermining the relationship,” she said.
Despite winning more parenting time, Gooden was relentless. After Ireland’s ruling, Judge Gilligan was assigned to the case and ordered Torres to pay Gooden child support of $300 a month per Gooden’s request.
A month before the police standoff, Gooden filed a motion alleging she had not paid him. He also asked the court to reduce her parenting time and order her to pay his attorney’s fees. A hearing on that matter happened two days after the shooting and the courts struck Gooden’s motion as “moot.”
In the end, Torres said the court system failed her kids. Her three children now carry the trauma of their father’s actions and absence.
“The kids have to deal with this,” she said. “I'm living with it every single day.”
In Minnesota, guardians ad litem are required to complete domestic violence training. They’re also required to do 15 hours of annual continuing education credits that include training on child protection and child welfare, according to Tami Baker-Olson. She was the program administrator for the state’s board of guardians ad litem at the time of the Torres-Gooden custody case.
“Guardians ad litem are however not trained to screen, nor is it our role to screen for domestic violence,” Baker-Olson wrote in an email to MPR News.
Too dangerous to own guns, but not to have custody
Within days of filing for sole custody of his and Torres’ children in 2020, Gooden also requested the courts to restore his gun rights. A judge denied it.
A Dakota County attorney said past allegations and convictions demonstrated Gooden’s “history of disobeying the law and posing a threat to public safety.” The prosecutor also said not enough time had passed to prove Gooden had changed.
It’s unclear whether the judges were aware of the Dakota County ruling that Gooden was unfit to own a gun. But Ireland’s ruling didn’t mention it and deemed Gooden the more stable parent.
Seven children, including the three Gooden and Torres share, were in his Burnsville home when Gooden fatally shot two officers and a firefighter-paramedic, before killing himself. Ashley Dyrdahl, Gooden’s girlfriend, bought the AR-15-style weapons for him and has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for supplying the guns to Gooden. Police had visited their home to investigate an allegation he had sexually assaulted a minor.
After Gooden’s death, Gilligan granted Torres sole custody of the three kids and terminated her obligation to pay child support and child care. He ruled she was fit to meet the kids’ needs and had no mental health or substance use issues that would affect them.
Since then, Torres has been living with her children in Woodbury. She said it’s been difficult seeing how they’re dealing with trauma from the shooting. Her daughter, who was 13 at the time, was in the room when her father shot himself.
“It’s just something that she’s dealing with every single day,” Torres said. “She’s an honor roll student and still wants to maintain those grades, but also is overwhelmed with everything. Any little thing is triggering to her.”
Torres said she’s trying to get through her new life with the kids day by day.
“It could have been a massacre of seven kids,” Torres said.
Torres said she partly blames Ramsey County court officials for not hearing her pleas for help.
“The one that I think about the most is like, I could have lost my children,” she said.
A 24-hour statewide sexual violence and domestic violence hotline is available in Minnesota. You can call Minnesota Day One at (866) 223-1111 or text (612) 399-9995.
If you or someone you know is struggling, please know trained help is available. Call or text 988 to get connected with a counselor or visit 988lifeline.org to start a chat.
