A Minneapolis man already in prison was charged on Tuesday with two counts of assault after allegedly dropping a rock from a highway overpass on May 29 in St. Paul, injuring two people in a passing vehicle below.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged 29-year-old Willie Lassiter Jr. with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon for the incident.
Before being charged, Lassiter was sent to the St. Cloud prison for a felony drunken-driving conviction. His first court appearance for the alleged assault is scheduled for Sept. 10.
Court documents say 911 operators were called about a highway injury at 10:38 p.m. A man said his girlfriend was driving them west on Hwy. 36 when they passed under the Rice Street bridge and heard a “big boom.”
Their Ford Escape’s windshield cratered. Glass scattered through the vehicle as they pulled to a stop, and a rock lay on the passenger side’s floor.
“[The driver] said when she pulled over, she realized that her ‘right arm was dangling’ and that a large rock was in the Escape,” the complaint read, adding that her boyfriend suffered cuts to his arms and face. “She noted that the Escape has a sunroof, through which the rock could have fallen, and added that they could easily have been killed in the incident.”
The driver was taken to a hospital where she received surgery and physical therapy for an arm fracture.
Investigators recovered the rock, which matched rocks found in the Metro Transit park-and-ride area near the overpass. Surveillance footage showed Lassiter shoplifting from a Cub Foods by the overpass that night. He walked toward the overpass minutes before the incident and bent over landscape rocks in the park-and-ride area.
