Police arrest suspect after woman, toddler killed on Fond du Lac Reservation

A Cloquet man is in jail for the suspected murder of a 27-year-old woman and her 18-month-old son on the Fond du Lac Reservation over the weekend.

Authorities on Sunday arrested Sheldon J. Thompson, 33, after a daylong search. He is being held on suspicion of second-degree murder.

The victims were found Saturday afternoon at a Cloquet home on the 1600 block of Locke Lane. The Cloquet Police Department said the suspect and victims "had a relationship or otherwise knew each other."

The community mourned the loss of Jackie DeFoe and her son, Kevin, on social media Monday.

"Jackie struggled and overcame many obstacles and always put her son first," the missing and murdered indigenous women advocacy group Gitchigumi Scouts wrote on Facebook. "She excelled at being a mother, a friend, a niece, a sister, a daughter. A beautiful soul, gone too soon."

The Duluth-based American Indian Community Housing Organization wrote that DeFoe was "just getting her life back together."

"She had gotten her child back home with her, she was happy and on a solid path, then he intercepted her."

Authorities have not confirmed the identity of the victims or how they died, and a motive remains unknown. The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating.

Thompson is currently on unsupervised probation for a felony violation of a domestic assault no-contact order in 2017. Though he was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime, a plea deal saw that he was given a downward departure from sentencing guidelines, according to court records. He would have been in prison until July had he been ordered to serve the sentence.

Thompson has been convicted of a number of domestic assaults in the past decade.

Tribal Chairman Kevin Dupuis said in a statement they are "doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of our people and our neighboring communities."

"We live in a very close-knit community in which trauma to any one individual or group deeply affects our collective well-being," he said.