As Antonio Brayboy stood watching while his companion attacked a mother and two boys with a knife in a south Minneapolis townhouse last month, one of the boys pleaded for help.”Play dead,” Brayboy told the boy.
Brayboy, 20, described the incident in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday charging him and Henry L. Patterson, 22, with three counts of first-degree murder in the June slayings of Ida Strouth, 42; her son, Jacob, 9, and their friend and neighbor, Jeremiah Sponsel, 13.Patterson went to the Strouth’s Windom Gables townhouse complex at 61st St. and Wentworth Court after learning that Strouth’s daughter, Sarah Strouth, would not be moving back into a Richfield apartment that she shared with him and their 3-month-old daughter, according to the complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.
Patterson blamed Ida Strouth for hiding her daughter and granddaughter.Brayboy said that when Patterson slashed Ida Strouth’s throat, he told her she wouldn’t keep him from his child, the complaint says.Minneapolis homicide Sgt. Rick Zimmerman, who interviewed Brayboy, declined Tuesday to discuss how Patterson and Brayboy became acquainted.
According to the complaint, Patterson asked Brayboy for a ride to Strouth’s townhouse June 27. Patterson had a key because he had lived there for two years with Sarah Strouth.Once inside, Brayboy told Zimmerman, Patterson dragged Strouth down the basement stairs. The two boys were forced to follow, as Brayboy blocked the way to keep them from leaving.
Detectives have declined to discuss details of what they called a gruesome scene. Officials have said the boys were tied up and have implied that all three were tortured.Their bodies were found by Sarah Strouth on June 28.Based on information Brayboy provided, Zimmerman retraced their route and found a steak knife that matches Brayboy’s description of the knife used in the killings, the complaint said.
Zimmerman said Tuesday that Patterson worked for a temporary employment agency. Brayboy, who lived in his car, worked at a service station.According to the complaint, Patterson left work at 1 p.m.
on June 27, met his brother and then went to a liquor store. He told investigators that after he and his brother split up, he was robbed of $190 at gunpoint.Afterward, he told police, he went to his mother’s home in north Minneapolis but had to climb in a window when no one heard him pounding on the door.He said he left for work at 7:15 the next morning.
No one at the home saw him, according to the complaint.
