Charges: Teens ‘ransack’ Edina Panda Express, steal three drug safes from Twin Cities Orthopedics

A group of Twin Cities teenagers allegedly went on a burglary spree in Edina earlier this month that included ransacking a Panda Express at the Southdale Center then stealing three safes full of drugs from Twin Cities Orthopedics before being caught trying to break into cars.

On Thursday the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Brandon Wayne Schopper, 18, of North Branch with two counts of felony burglary and one count of fifth-degree drug possession. Two juveniles, one 17 and the other now 18, face similar charges. The Minnesota Star Tribune does not typically name juveniles charged with crimes if they have not been certified as adults. The unnamed 18-year-old was still a juvenile at the time of the robberies.

The felony burglary charges stem from the theft at Twin Cities Orthopedics, where the suspects allegedly grabbed a fob key from the front desk and stole the safes. Once they got the safes home, they cracked them open with an ax and found a trove of drugs, charges said.

According to court documents:

In the early morning hours of Sept. 2, Edina police responded to a phone call of suspicious activity in the 4200 block of Valley View Road. They found three men and one woman trying to break into cars. While searching Schopper and the two male teenagers, they found all three in possession of fentanyl citrate, Dilaudid and midazolam. They also found black ski masks, headlamps, flashlights, two Apple iPads with stickers on the back indicating they belonged to a medical facility, three pried open safes and a narcotics log for TCO Crosstown Surgery.

At that time, police confirmed a burglary had taken place at the orthopedic urgent care facility.

When police searched one of the juveniles, they also found a baggie with two large psychedelic mushrooms, “two glass containers containing marijuana wax,” 102 tabs of what was suspected to be LSD and a digital scale. That juvenile faces an additional charge of second-degree drug possession.

Police viewed surveillance video from Twin Cities Orthopedics that showed a group with similar appearance to the defendants entering the hospital around 2 a.m. before leaving 20 minutes later.

Two days later a manager at the Southdale Center Panda Express called police saying he was missing a mailbox key, a key to the cash drawer and a fridge key. Surveillance video from the restaurant shows four people jump over the service counter and “ransack” the fast-food restaurant around 1:30 a.m. Those four people were wearing the same clothes as the four people from the surveillance video at Twin Cities Orthopedics.

Schopper allegedly told police the group had gone to Southdale Center to “explore” and had been at the Panda Express. He also said they went to TCO to take pictures before finding a key fob and entering the room where drugs were kept. They took three safes to a friend’s house and opened them with an ax. They split the drugs evenly.

Schopper, who turned 18 in July, is due in court on Sept. 30. He was charged in August with fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle in Hennepin County. One of the juveniles was charged with third-degree assault in November 2023, the outcome of that case is pending. The juveniles are set to be arraigned in juvenile court in October.

No attorney was listed for any of the teenagers.