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Crime, Law and Justice
Matt Sepic

Couple charged in shooting planned attack for at least a week, prosecutors say

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Prosecutors say a St. Paul man charged with trying to kill the mother of his child planned the shooting along with his girlfriend for at least a week.

Timothy Allen Amacher, 41, and Colleen Larson, 24, are charged with attempted first-degree murder for the April 20 shooting of Nicole Lenway amid a years-long custody dispute between Amacher and Lenway over their five-year-old son.

A judge in May set bond for the couple at $300,000. Amacher remains jailed. Hennepin County Jail records show that Larson was released June 5 after posting bond.

According to a new court filing, Larson allegedly admitted to prosecutors in a May 24 jailhouse interview that she shot Lenway at Amacher's direction outside FamilyWise, a supervised parenting center on University Ave. in Minneapolis.

At the time of the shooting, Amacher was inside visiting his son. Larson also allegedly said that she and Amacher discussed killing Lenway “a week or two before the shooting,” according to prosecutors’ June 8 response to Amacher’s motion to dismiss the charges.

In the filing, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Patrick Lofton writes that in an “extremely emotional” statement, Larson “discussed wanting to be with [Amacher] and adopt his child. She stated that [Amacher] said she could adopt the child if [Lenway] were dead and asked Ms. Larson if she would ‘pull the trigger.’”

Lofton also writes that Lenway was discharged from a hospital after being treated for a perforated lung as well as gunshot wounds to her neck and arm.

According to the criminal complaints filed May 2, Lenway has full custody of their son, and a family court judge ordered recently that Amacher may only visit him in a supervised setting.

On the day of the attack, Amacher was inside FamilyWise for a planned visit with the boy while Larson allegedly drove Amacher's new Dodge Ram pickup truck to the facility with no license plates, scouted out the building, then “wearing all black, a hood, gloves and a medical mask” hid behind a fence until Lenway got out of her vehicle.

Prosecutors say Larson was recorded on surveillance video raising a gun at Lenway, but the shooting itself happened just outside the camera’s field of view.

The June 8 filing also says that Larson met Amacher at about age 13, when she was a martial arts student at Amacher’s studio in White Bear Lake. She moved in with him in 2016, when she was 18, at the time the child was born.

The court document also details a request Amacher allegedly made in February, where he offered a friend $50,000 to kill Lenway.

Prosecutors say in the criminal complaints that Amacher made 10 reports to police since 2019 alleging that Lenway and her boyfriend were abusing the child, but courts found those reports to be unfounded. During an investigation of one allegation, the boy told a social worker that Amacher “had instructed him to lie about being abused.”

In the new filing, prosecutors also say that Larson admitted sending an email to several Twin Cities news outlets three hours before the shooting. In the email, she wrote that Minnesota’s family court system was unfairly depriving Amacher of his parental rights because he is Black. Larson allegedly told investigators that she copied the language from a letter Amacher was drafting to the family court’s chief judge.