A clerk at a Minneapolis grocery store was killed Friday after a customer allegedly drove a golf club through his torso, authorities said.
The beloved local fixture is being remembered as “a bright light” and a beloved member of the local arts community.
Local police said officers responding to reports of a stabbing at Oak Grove Grocery in Loring Park found a 66-year-old man impaled behind the counter.
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“It appears that an individual came into this grocery store, prior to the police arriving, and came up to the counter with some items to purchase,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a news conference. “And it appears— [he] then went behind the counter and then began to assault and bludgeon the individual behind the counter in a very grotesque way.”
The victim was taken to a hospital, where he died of his injuries, O’Hara said. Police arrested a suspect, Taylor Schulz, 44, after a six-hour standoff at an apartment building across the street involving negotiators, a SWAT team, a drone unit, and a bomb squad, according to local station KSTP.
Police did not immediately share a possible motive in the crime. “We will do our best to try and make sense of this, but this is horrific and absolutely senseless,” the chief added.
In the hours after the incident, friends came forward to identify the victim as Robert Skafte.
“It’s heartbreaking. I haven’t even slept yet,” a former co-worker told KSTP. “The amount of heartbreak I feel is just, it’s like I lost a member of my family.”
Skafte was “a pillar of his neighborhood and community,” a close friend, Stephanie Grey, told the station. José Herrera, a community leader, said that Skafte regularly volunteered for the Stevens Square Community Organization, helping out with local gardens and the farmers market.
“It’s like, literally impossible to quantify all the things he’s done in our neighborhood,” he said.
He was also a well-known local dancer who performed across the city. Myron Johnson, founder of Ballet of the Dolls, a company that Skafte frequently worked with, told the Star Tribune that he was “such a bright light.”
A neighbor who stopped by the grocery store on Friday shortly after the attack told the Star Tribune that he’d found Skafte inside, on his knees and still conscious. The golf club was through Skafte’s abdomen with the broken-off head lying nearby, according to Tony Gutoski.
“It just makes me angry,” Gutoski said. “He was a great dude.”
