Eden Prairie police have arrested a man with a violent past and history of mental illness who is now suspected of killing his 7-year-old brother, officials said late Wednesday.
Officers were called about 10 p.m. Tuesday to a house in the 900 block of Lee Drive for a welfare check on a 28-year-old man believed to be in crisis, police said in a statement.
While checking on other residents in the house, officers found an unresponsive boy, police said. The child was taken to M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, where he was pronounced dead. Police did not say how the boy was killed.
The b Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday identified the boy as Abdullahi Gelle.
The man was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder, police said. He was taken to the Hennepin County jail following a medical evaluation and remains in custody without bail pending charges, police added. The Star Tribune generally does not identify suspects before they are charged.
Court records show that the suspect is the brother of 23-year-old Dolal Idd, who was shot to death in December 2020 at a south Minneapolis gas station by police during a sting operation.
The Dakota County Attorney's Office Idd concluded the officers were justified in shooting Dolal Idd because he disobeyed police orders and fired at them first in the parking lot of a Holiday gas station at 36th Street and Cedar Avenue.
At the time of the boy's death this week, the man was under supervision with the Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections stemming from his conviction in 2015 for first-degree assault and burglary for the robbery of a Life Time Fitness member in an Eden Prairie locker room that left the man badly beaten and a similar attack on a resident in a randomly chosen home in the city about an hour later.
