St. Paul man charged with murder outside Seattle area high school is captured in Eagan

A St. Paul man charged with indiscriminately spraying a crowd with gunfire after a Thanksgiving Day pickup football game in the Seattle area, killing one of the players, has been captured in Dakota County more than three months later, authorities said.

William O. Holly, 25, was arrested by Eagan police without incident Wednesday afternoon on a first-degree murder charge stemming from the Nov. 22 shooting.

Holly was alone in a home in the 1400 block of Shoreline Drive and was not armed when officers moved in and apprehended him, said Eagan police officer Aaron Machtemes, the department's spokesman.

"We were given one of five locations around the metro that King County [Wash.] identified as possible locations for Mr. Holly," Machtemes said. "Our officers did surveillance on the Shoreline home and identified the suspect at the residence."

The Thanksgiving Day pickup game came to an abrupt halt about noon, when one of the players spit in another's face on the field of Mount Rainier High School in the suburb of Des Moines, according to the charges filed in King County.

The crowd moved to a parking lot and the player who spit summoned Holly to the scene, where Holly fired 11 shots from a semiautomatic handgun, the charges allege.

One bullet hit Leuea Loto, 21, a Mount Rainier alumnus who was home from the College of San Mateo near San Francisco, where he played football in 2017 and had accepted a scholarship to play for Missouri Valley College. He died later that day.

"That's what happens," the complaint quoted Holly as telling one of the witnesses soon afterward. "I just started shooting toward people. I didn't know who I was shooting at."

He eluded capture in Washington for nearly three weeks before flying back to the Twin Cities, the criminal complaint read.

Holly also has felony domestic assault charges pending in Ramsey County, where he's accused of punching his girlfriend more than 40 times on Feb. 2, 2018, in her St. Paul home in the 1100 block of Barclay Street.

Holly fled moments before police arrived and a warrant was issued for his arrest, according to the charges.

Holly's criminal history includes a pending domestic violence charge in Redmond, Wash., and four convictions for other violent behavior, all occurring in 2015 in St. Paul: two for domestic assault and one each for terroristic threats and violation of a no-contact court order.

He also has several convictions in Georgia, namely for battery, cruelty to children and obstructing police.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482