Man gets 24-year sentence for ambush, sexual assaults of women in Chisago County

A Minnesota man has received a 24-year prison term for ambushing and sexually assaulting three women years ago in Chisago County after he was identified using DNA evidence.

Donald Edmond Warner, 46, of North Branch, was sentenced Monday in Chisago County District Court after he pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of attempted first-degree sexual assault in connection with the nighttime attacks on strangers in 2010, 2011 and 2017.

With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Warner is expected to serve the first 15⅓ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.

Prosecutors said Warner attacked the young women as they were walking in their communities late at night. In each instance, he wrestled them to the ground and assaulted them.

The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) turned in 2023 to Othram, a genetic genealogy laboratory, that tied DNA connected to one of the victims to Warner, the County Attorney’s Office said.

According to court documents:

Shortly before midnight on May 9, 2010, a woman left the Rustic Inn in Stacy and walked north on Hwy. 61 toward her grandfather’s home. After turning onto a gravel road, she was pushed down from behind and raped by Warner.

DNA evidence was collected at Regions Hospital from the woman and stored in a BCA kit. Othram matched that DNA to Warner’s using a cigarette butt that investigators retrieved in late 2023 from a dumpster outside his apartment building.

The second attack occurred about 2:15 a.m. on July 10, 2011, in Lindstrom, where a woman reported being grabbed from behind while walking home from the city’s fire hall.

The woman said she broke free, and her attacker ran off. During her struggle, an earring was ripped from her right ear. She recovered the earring and turned it over to an investigator, and the BCA collected DNA from it.

In January 2022, the BCA linked the DNA from the earring to DNA evidence collected in an attack in July 2017, also in Lindstrom.