Nearly 4 years in prison for woman who supplied guns used to kill 3 Burnsville first responders

A federal judge handed down a sentence of nearly four years in prison to a woman who supplied a man with firearms later used in a shootout that killed two Burnsville police officers and a paramedic during a standoff in 2024.

Ashley Anne Dyrdahl, 36, was sentenced to 45 months in prison Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul. She pleaded guilty in January to two counts of straw purchasing — or purchasing firearms for someone prohibited from buying guns.

Dyrdahl’s boyfriend at the time, 38-year-old Shannon Cortez Gooden, used the illegally purchased weapons to fire more than 100 rounds when officers responded to the couple’s home for a domestic abuse report in February 2024.

Officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, and firefighter/paramedic Adam Finseth, 40, were fatally wounded. Sgt. Adam Medlicott was also injured before Gooden took his own life.

In addition to the federal term, Dyrdahl was also sentenced to two years’ supervised release. Her attorney Manny Atwal asked that she self-surrender to prison at a later date but Judge Jerry Blackwell ordered that she be taken into immediate custody.

Dyrdahl’s sentence is higher than the 3½ -year prison sentence sought by federal prosecutors, who argued for the upward departure from federal guidelines by stating Dyrdahl provided a “violent, depraved man” with deadly weapons.

Families and Burnsville first responders packed the St. Paul courtroom to petition the judge for the maximum possible sentence, arguing that though Dyrdahl did not pull the trigger, she put “weapons of war” in Gooden’s hands.

The first responders’ families spoke at length about the deep grief they’ve experienced that day and expressed anger over how it was preventable but for the straw purchase. A family friend read a statement by Tara Finseth, Adam Finseth’s wife. In it, she said her husband was twice deployed to Iraq and survived only to be killed in his home country.

“I thought we had paid our dues,” Tara Finseth wrote.

A second-degree assault conviction had prohibited Gooden from possessing firearms since 2008. In 2020, he unsuccessfully requested a court to regain his right to own a firearm.

A federal indictment against Dyrdahl said that between September 2023 and January 2024, she bought five guns from two dealers and transferred them to Gooden. The weapons included three semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm lower receivers. Another was a Franklin Armory FAI-15 .300-caliber semiautomatic firearm. One was a .300-caliber barrel for the lower receiver.

Prior to receiving her sentence, Dyrdahl tearfully addressed the court to express remorse for that day and say she prays every day for the victims and their families.

Atwal, Dyrdahl’s federal defender, said her client’s relationship with Gooden was abusive and pointed to how many straw purchasers are women like her.

Blackwell briefly addressed the abusive relationship before handing down his sentence, but concluded that Dyrdahl still had “agency” when she lied on the federal paperwork to purchase the weapons and supply them to Gooden.

The purchases, which occurred five months before the shootout, showed “planning and deliberation before the deadly attack,” Blackwell said.