Minneapolis woman’s killing exposes gaps in how police investigate domestic violence

After seven months, Mariah Samuels wanted out. So she called her boyfriend, David Wright, to end the turbulent relationship.

That same night in August, Wright tracked Samuels to a north Minneapolis home where she was dropping off her 11-year-old son. When she stepped outside, Wright pistol-whipped her, threw her against a fence and grabbed her by the throat, she later alleged in a no-contact order. She called police, but he fled before they arrived.

Samuels did everything a domestic violence victim is supposed to do. She cooperated with the responding Minneapolis police officer, whose risk assessment revealed that Wright posed a serious threat to her safety. Her friend, who witnessed the attack over Facetime, gave a statement. A nearby surveillance camera captured video of the assault.

But an investigator was never assigned to the case.

Three weeks later, Samuels was shot 10 times and killed outside her own home — just hours after calling 911 again to report that Wright had violated a restraining order. He now stands charged with her murder.

“She called the police because she was scared,” said her sister, Salina Owens. “They didn’t do their job. That’s just the bottom line.”

The case exposes longstanding gaps in the way Minneapolis police investigate domestic violence. A sizable backlog leaves domestic calls sitting, sometimes for weeks on end, without proper follow-up by the depleted agency.

Just five investigators staff MPD’s domestic assault unit, despite the growing number of domestic abuse calls officers field each year.

Domestic incidents marked the fifth-most common emergency call in the city during the first half of last year, according to police call data analyzed by the Star Tribune. And they comprise roughly one-third of all aggravated assaults in Minneapolis since 2019.

Earlier this month, the domestic assault unit had a backlog of approximately 49 Gone on Arrival cases, where a suspect flees the scene before police arrive, that have not been assigned an investigator.

For years, researchers of intimate-partner violence have sounded the alarm about systemic lapses in the way Minneapolis police respond to such incidents, which they say enables repeat abusers.

In 2023, Global Rights for Women, a local nonprofit, published a study identifying several gaps and offering a series of policy recommendations. Among the top findings: Some assailants have learned officers will not make a serious effort to find them afterward, even if the victim has a no-contact order in place.

A domestic violence working group developed a risk-assessment tool that would help police identify the most dangerous suspects. Every officer in the northside Fourth Precinct was trained this summer on using that assessment on domestic calls, as part of a pilot program the police department hopes to eventually expand citywide.

The risk assessment conducted following the Aug. 21 assault of Samuels revealed that Wright had access to firearms, had shown up at Samuels’ workplace before and had threatened to kill her family. City officials say there was a search for the suspect’s vehicle, but there appeared to be no further investigation.

The department’s handling of the Samuels case raised questions inside City Hall, where elected officials noted its resemblance to other high-profile incidents involving vulnerable residents: Davis Moturi, a south Minneapolis resident shot by his mentally ill neighbor last fall following months of harassment and calls to police, and Allison Lussier, found dead in her North Loop apartment last year under suspicious circumstances after ongoing abuse by her ex-boyfriend. Police say that case remains unsolved because her manner of death could not be determined.

Hennepin County Board Chair Irene Fernando demanded answers in an email to Mayor Jacob Frey and the city’s top law enforcement leaders last month, expressing frustration about what she called a “preventable murder.”

In her reply, Deputy Chief of Investigations Emily Olson underscored that staffing challenges have exacerbated what has always been an “overwhelming” number of domestic violence cases. But she rejected any insinuation that her officers don’t care about victims, calling that narrative “dangerous and false.”

“We would still investigate, but it does not take priority when the victim does not want to prosecute,” she said.

However, no available records indicate that Samuels ever opposed criminal charges against Wright. Relatives and those with direct knowledge of the case insist that Samuels was fully cooperative with authorities and dispute that she ever made such a claim.

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office told the Star Tribune that information was never communicated to their staff. Nor is victim involvement always required if the case is provable.

Minneapolis police never submitted a case to prosecutors for potential charges.

In a recent interview, Olson acknowledged the tragedy of Samuels’ case and vowed to reassess how she and the department can do better, but she stressed that the agency only has a “finite number of resources.”

Yet the number of domestic violence episodes keep climbing. Minneapolis has logged 880 domestic violence incidents so far this year, a 9% increase over this point in 2024.

Gone on Arrivals are so prevalent that hundreds of such calls have been shifted to property crimes investigators stationed throughout the city, who attempt to clear older reports between other assignments. Department leaders added one sworn investigator to the domestic unit just this month, dedicated entirely to managing those calls.

Every GOA case, like Samuels’ earlier assault, is reviewed by an attorney embedded within Hennepin County’s Domestic Abuse Service Center prior to potential charging. Each is flagged with one of three classifications: priority, cooperative victim or no feedback/uncooperative victim.

Samuels was one of eight felony assaults reviewed by a Hennepin County prosecutor on Aug. 25 and sent back to MPD the same day for additional investigation, records show. None were declined.

Only one was listed as a “priority,” a label indicating that it may involve an ongoing risk to victim safety and appears “to be chargeable with minimal follow-up investigation.”

That sent her file toward the bottom of MPD’s Gone on Arrival list, to be assigned a lead investigator only after higher priority cases were cleared.

Olson told the Star Tribune there was no reason, given the information she had at the time, to elevate Samuels’ case to the top of that pile.

“I don’t think that we did things wrong,” she said, noting that it would be “unreasonable” to think she could have changed the outcome.

“Alarm bells should have been going off that he was going to offend again,” said retired MPD Assistant Chief Kris Arneson upon reviewing the records. She noted that strangulation is among the chief indicators of lethality.

“Some float to the top faster and more aggressively than others,” she said. “This should have.”

The attack on the day of their breakup in August marked the first time Wright was violent toward Samuels, she told police.

Samuels filed an Order for Protection against him five days later, alleging that he threatened in texts to blow up the home she shared with her father and youngest son. The petition outlined a harrowing sequence of events, culminating in the pistol-whipping, followed by more threats to shoot her and anyone left inside.

She asked a judge to immediately bar Wright from coming to her workplace, her home and her ex-partner’s house down the street, where the assault had occurred.

“No contact, no exceptions,” she wrote.

Three weeks later, on the morning of her murder, Samuels awoke to a series of angry texts.

Samuels was convinced Wright had been at the property and told Officer Ryan Weber she thought Wright had tampered with her vehicle.

In his official report, filed within 30 minutes of the call, Weber observed that Samuels “did not appear scared or frightened of Wright.” He also noted that he could find no evidence of damage.

He did not offer domestic violence resources because Samuels advised him: “Wright would not have knowledge of this address” and she “felt safe staying at this address,” according to internal police records.

But body camera footage from the scene doesn’t support that claim.

The footage from approximately 5:17 a.m. depicts a brief communication with Samuels. She shares the harassing text messages from Wright and emphasizes that he would have no reasonable explanation for contacting her or coming to the house.

“No, I know for sure he came here. There’s no other way he would’ve known for sure I was here,” Samuels replied, referring to the texts.

Weber told her a report would be made and explained that a judge might move to issue an arrest warrant for Wright. Samuels asked when the judge would make that decision, but Weber couldn’t say. At her request, Weber walked over to Samuels’ jeep and gave it a once-over with his flashlight before clearing the call.

The entire interaction lasted just over four minutes. At no point did Samuels say she felt safe or cast doubt on Wright’s knowledge of her whereabouts.

In response to revelations from the body camera footage, Chief O’Hara directed that all domestic violence and Order for Protection protocols be updated to require that officers “ask the victim if they feel safe and take affirmative action based on their response.”

At 7:47 a.m. on Sept. 14, Samuels shared on Facebook the surveillance video of the prior assault and recent harassing text messages. In a subsequent post, she accused officers of not doing anything.

Police arrested Wright in Anoka within 24 hours of the shooting. He was charged in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree murder and illegal gun possession and remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail.

He confessed to the killing under police questioning, court records say. His public defender did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

At the time of the crime, Wright was on federal supervised release. It’s not clear why his probation officer wasn’t flagged after he was named as a suspect in the armed assault against Samuels or why he wasn’t immediately sent back to jail.

“You can be violated for just about anything,” said Avonne Winston, Samuels’ aunt. She remains baffled that Wright was allowed to operate freely for weeks without intervention by law enforcement.

The Samuels case uncovered longstanding divisions between the police administration and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who questioned Olson’s truthfulness and criticized MPD’s handling of domestics during private email exchanges with other elected leaders.

Olson urged Moriarty take responsibility for her office’s role — and challenged the notion that swift criminal charges would have kept Wright in jail and ultimately prevented the killing.

“If she thinks the system failed, then she failed.”

The weekend after Samuels’ death, more than 150 people marched toward the police department’s Fourth Precinct demanding justice for Samuels, a woman affectionately known to loved ones as ‘Juicy.’

Friends and family eulogized the 34-year-old mother of two as a radiant spirit and devoted mother, who beamed with pride at seeing her eldest son recently graduate from high school.

A lifelong animal lover, Samuels worked as a dog groomer at the Fridley Petco while also running her own grooming business. She owned four cats, one bearded dragon and a gecko.

Family members released 34 butterflies — one of Samuels’ favorite creatures — to honor each year of her life.

Jeff Hargarten of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.