Their kids have heard the taunts, and seen them, too, on signs and banners erected across the street from their White Bear Lake home by a neighbor taking digs at their mom's alcoholism.

Don't read the words, Kim and Greg Hoffman will say. Ignore the shouted obscenities. Yet it can be hard for a child to turn away, especially when father and daughter make the rare foray into the front yard and the neighbor stands with arms folded on her lawn or in the front window.

"She's staring," Kylie Hoffman, 9, will say.

ANTHONY LONETREE , Star Tribune

Read more

Ending a decade of turmoil, the Minnesota Senate on Thursday gave final approval to a $975 million Vikings stadium meant to anchor the team in Minneapolis for a generation.

The vote ended a turbulent session that saw the project nearly die several times, only to get revived and then dominate the Legislature's final weeks, as opponents ultimately succumbed to intense pressure.

"We delivered," said a triumphant Sen. Julie Rosen, the stadium bill's sponsor, as purple-clad, horn-wearing fans cheered wildly from the gallery overhead. "We are going to have a first-class stadium we can all be very, very proud of."

The 36-30 vote in the Senate came only after the Minnesota House sweated out an overnight session in which bare-knuckled bargaining sessions went on past midnight and final approval came at 4 a.m.

BAIRD HELGESON and JENNIFER BROOKS , Star Tribune staff writers

Read more

Amara, Sophie and Cecilia Schaffhausen excitedly rushed to the door when their father dropped in unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, months after their parents divorced and he moved to Minot, N.D.

Jessica Schaffhausen thought her ex-husband, Aaron, was working a construction job in North Dakota, but he'd been fired last week when he didn't show up for work. He had threatened to kill Jessica just a few months earlier, but on Tuesday he text-messaged her with a request: He was back in St. Paul and wanted to spend the day with his girls at the family home in River Falls, Wis. She agreed, but insisted that he leave the house before she returned home at 3:30 p.m.

The girls pulled him upstairs to show him their things. Their baby sitter told investigators she followed later, hugged the girls goodbye and left them in Amara's bedroom with their father.

At 3:30 p.m., Jessica Schaffhausen answered her phone and heard her ex-husband's voice: "You can come home now, because I killed the kids."

CHAO XIONG , Star Tribune

Read more

LITTLE FALLS, MINN. - Insisting the case crosses the line from self-defense to a cold-blooded double execution, Morrison County authorities filed second-degree murder charges Monday against a 64-year-old man who killed two teenage cousins after they'd broken into his home on Thanksgiving.

This woodsy central Minnesota town of 8,000 was jolted as the gruesome details spilled out in a criminal complaint, alleging Byron David Smith put a handgun under the chin of wounded and gasping 18-year-old Haile Kifer for what he told police was a "good clean finishing shot."

Smith, who according to a friend and a relative had endured previous break-ins, sat shackled in an orange jail jumpsuit as County Attorney Brian Middendorf accused him of "cold-blooded murder of two teenagers under circumstances that are appalling and far beyond any self-defense claim."

Sheriff Michel Wetzel said Monday that he believes the teenagers were committing a burglary but said Smith's reaction went beyond legal protections of Minnesota law that allows crime victims to use reasonable force to protect themselves and their property during a felony.

CURT BROWN , Star Tribune

Read more

Buoyed by a last-minute court injunction, a Wisconsin taxidermist who believes that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is sinful passed out Bibles on Sunday at yet another Twin Cities Pride Festival.

"I do this once a year. I talk to people about the love of Jesus Christ," said Brian Johnson, an evangelical Christian from Hayward, as he stood with his family and a black suitcase full of Bibles in Minneapolis' Loring Park, the epicenter of the 40th annual festival.

His legal route back to the park was convoluted. Festival organizers' attempts to ban Johnson from the park had resulted in a Minneapolis Park Board plan to restrict his Bible distribution to a booth on the edge of the festival. Two weeks ago, his request for an injunction against that ban was denied by a U.S. District Court judge.

JIM ADAMS , Star Tribune

Read more

Five members of a motorcycle-racing family from Jordan were killed Sunday while returning from a Texas vacation when the motor home they were in plunged into a ravine off Interstate 35 in Kansas.

Another 13 people, including several other members of the Kerber family, were badly injured in the crash just outside Williamsburg, Kan., according to authorities and friends of the family.

"All day long, we've been hoping and saying a prayer or two," said John Marks, a close family friend of the Kerbers, a well-known family from the Scott County community.

The family, including mother Pauline Kerber, 46, a widow, and many of her 12 children, had vacationed in Texas for a week and participated in motorcycle races.

HERÓN MÁRQUEZ ESTRADA and JIM ADAMS , Star Tribune staff writers

Read more

On the outskirts of Little Falls, Minn., Crystal Shaeffel walked down the long driveway on Sunday, past the "keep out" sign, to see the house where her teenage brother and her cousin were shot to death on Thanksgiving Day.

She was met in the driveway by the brother of Byron David Smith, the man who is in the Morrison County Jail on suspicion of second-degree murder after telling deputies he shot the pair when they broke into his house, where he lived alone. He is to make his first court appearance on Monday.

The bodies of Nicholas Brady, 17, and his cousin Haile Kifer, 18, both of Little Falls, were discovered on Friday when authorities began investigating a missing-persons report and after a car parked down the road from Smith's home prompted a neighbor to report suspicions that something was wrong.

"They were 17 and 18 years old, and they didn't need to die," Shaeffel told Bruce Smith as she stood in the driveway, tears flowing down her face.

JOY POWELL , Star Tribune

Read more

Well-wishers crowded into Jack Jablonski's hospital room and lit up his Facebook and CaringBridge pages all weekend as the high school sophomore and his family awaited a prognosis on a paralyzing injury he suffered during a hockey game on Friday.

"It's a parent's worst nightmare," his father, Mike Jablonski of Minneapolis, said on Sunday in the pediatric intensive care unit at Hennepin County Medical Center. "He dropped and didn't move. Right then and there I knew that my son, that there was something seriously wrong."

Known as "Jabby" to his friends, the 16-year-old honors student, hockey forward and varsity tennis player at Benilde-St. Margaret's scored the first goal of what would be a victory for the junior varsity Red Knights against Wayzata during the Holiday Hockey Classic tournament at the St. Louis Park Recreation Center.

Jack's team was up by one goal 5 minutes and 48 seconds into the second period when he made a dash for the puck near the end boards with two Wayzata players in hot pursuit, said Chris McGowan, the Red Knights' JV coach.

DAN BROWNING , Star Tribune

Read more

A thick printout containing hundreds of text messages sheds little light on what happened when Amy Senser struck and killed a man on a Minneapolis freeway ramp last summer.

But it does paint a picture of a family struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy in the glare of news media and public attention while she faced serious felony charges.

Asked by a friend a week after the accident whether the Sensers had reported it to the State Patrol, Joe Senser texted back: "Yes, that's all I can say. Humiliation, and it's just starting."

The phone records of Senser, 45, and her husband, a restaurateur and ex-Minnesota Vikings star, were part of more than 140 exhibits released Monday, four days after a Hennepin County jury convicted her in the hit-and-run death of 38-year-old Anousone Phanthavong.

ABBY SIMONS , Star Tribune

Read more

Dozens of parents and high schools across the metro endorsed a Minnetonka principal's message Tuesday that discourages teen girls from wearing trendy tight-fitting leggings with increasingly shorter tops.

Sparking the latest debate over what's appropriate attire in schools, David Adney sent an e-mail to high school parents Monday asking them to talk to their daughters about wearing spandex-like yoga pants or other tight-fitting leggings with T-shirts that expose "more leg and backside" and can "be highly distracting for other students."

From Forest Lake to St. Paul, more than 70 parents and other high schools called or e-mailed Adney supporting his message, which didn't ban leggings, but urges teens to dress more modestly.

"It must have touched a nerve," he said, saying the school tries to get ahead of problem trends.

KELLY SMITH , Star Tribune

Read more

Faced with a stubborn slide in sales at its U.S. stores, Best Buy Co. Inc. announced Thursday its steepest round of cuts: closure of 50 big box stores and elimination of 400 positions at corporate headquarters in Richfield.

The closings include five stores in the Twin Cities area, leaving 301 workers without jobs. Nationally, layoffs will likely be in the thousands since each store employs roughly 100 workers, including so-called Blue Shirts and Geek Squad technicians.

Best Buy, once known as the undisputed discount king of consumer electronics, has been struggling to find its place in a world dominated by flashy high-end brand temples like Apple Stores and low-cost Internet retailers like Amazon. Customers have been increasingly migrating online, where they often find better deals, forcing Best Buy to figure out a reason why shoppers would need to visit an actual store.

Last year, Best Buy lost a staggering $1.2 billion as it deeply discounted merchandise to keep pace with rivals Amazon and Wal-Mart.

THOMAS LEE , Star Tribune

Read more

Same-sex marriages aren't recognized in most states, but Target stores nationwide are now selling greeting cards to celebrate them.

Placed on card racks under the headings of "For two special men" and "For two special women," the cards are adorned with phrases such as "Mr. & Mr." and "Two very special women, one very special love."

The cards hit shelves in mid-June, a month after the retailer began selling T-shirts with gay pride themes, and two years after Target drew a backlash for a $150,000 donation it made to a group backing Tom Emmer, the Republican gubernatorial candidate who opposed gay marriage.

Target offers a range of greeting cards that appeal to a variety of audiences, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, spokeswoman Molly Snyder said.

WALKER MOSKOP , Star Tribune

Read more