Victim of Lakeville bat beating says attackers had wrong man

Home invaders repeatedly beat a Lakeville man with a baseball bat and kicked and punched him -- apparently over a mistaken belief that he stole drugs from them, according to charges in Dakota County District Court.

Jason J. Betelak, 21, of Lakeville was charged with aggravated robbery, second-degree assault and third-degree assault, all felony crimes.

He and another man confessed to police that they went into the victim's home and beat him, court papers say.

Prosecutors also plan to charge the second man, also 21 and who is being held in the Dakota County jail along with Betelak. Those charges were not yet posted Tuesday.

Several more people could face charges, including for providing the wooden bat and helping to get rid of it after the beating.

The attack sprang from the assailants' belief that the victim had broken into a car parked outside a Lakeville plastics company and stolen Ecstasy pills, marijuana and cash in August, according to court papers.

Betelak and the victim had worked together at the company. The victim had insisted to his assailants that it was a third employee who stole the drugs, the court papers say.

He said one man held him down while Betelak struck him in the head, chest, arms and legs. The victim, identified only by the first name of Jim, told police that he believed that he had blacked out, and when he awoke, he was kicked repeatedly.

Betelak allegedly kept asking where his meth, marijuana and Ecstasy were, and the victim kept answering that a different plastics company employee had stolen it, the complaint says. Betelak also allegedly told the victim that he would be killed if he told what happened.

During the beating, the accomplice who was holding the victim down for Betelak began to worry that they were beating the wrong man, court papers say.

The invaders ransacked the victim's home and later claimed that they recovered 10 Ecstasy pills, a digital scale and a box cutter belong to Betelak.

The victim was able to call 911 after his attackers left. He was hospitalized at Regions Hospital in St. Paul with a lacerated kidney, deep gashes to his head, a broken scapula and a bowel injury.