St. Croix deputy's funeral set for Friday in Hudson
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The funeral for a St. Croix County Sheriff’s deputy who was fatally shot over the weekend is set for Friday at Hudson High School. Kaitie Leising, 29, was the fourth law enforcement officer in the region to be killed in the line of duty since April 1.
She had worked for the St. Croix County Sheriff’s office for about a year. Prior to that Leising served as a sheriff’s deputy in Pennington County, S.D.
St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson said she made a big impression on the staff in her relatively short time with the agency.
“Everybody says ‘if you have a bad day, talk to Kaitie, because your bad day is done.’ You can’t stay salty when you talk to Kaitie. And that was the absolute truth. She just had that spirit … and a spirit that was stolen from her,” Knudson said.
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Leising leaves behind her wife, Courtney Leising and their 3-month-old son, Syler. She expressed interest in a law enforcement career from an early age, according to an obituary published in the Hudson Star-Observer.
Other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies have stepped up to cover patrol shifts to give Leising’s colleagues, a tight-knit staff of 120, including 88 deputies, time to grieve and meet with grief counselors. Knudson said the support marks a sea change from how law enforcement used to handle such tragedies.
“What was done 20 to 30 years ago was ‘buck up and get back out there.’ That doesn’t work. We need time to process and grieve. But it’s also important to make sure that we are good to get back out there because our citizens deserve that as well.”
Knudson says it’s been nearly seventy years since a St. Croix County deputy was killed in the line of duty. But only a month ago two young officers from nearby departments, Chetek Police officer Emily Breidenbach, 32, and Cameron Police officer Hunter Scheel, 23, were killed when a suspect opened fire during a traffic stop.
Also last month Pope County deputy Josh Owen was killed while responding to a domestic violence call in western Minnesota.
Visitation is set for this Friday from 9 a.m. until noon at Hudson High School. A funeral with law enforcement honors will follow immediately after in the parking lot. There will also be a squad car procession, but details about the time and route are still being finalized.
At 6:15 p.m. on Saturday, Leising was dispatched to a report of a possible drunk driver in a ditch.
According to a statement from the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Leising asked the driver, 34-year-old Jeremiah Daniel Johnson of Shakopee, Minn., to take a field sobriety test before going back to his vehicle. Johnson was “evasive” and after about eight minutes, he turned and shot her.
Leising returned fire with three shots, but none hit Johnson, who ran into nearby woods.
An officer who responded to help with the search saw Johnson, “heard a gunshot, and witnessed him collapse to the ground.” No other officers fired their weapons.
Knudson said he and his colleagues are struggling to understand why Johnson opened fire.
“For reasons that we’ll probably never know, this morally bankrupt and ethically challenged criminal decides to turn and murder Kaitie,” Knudson said. “That stunned us, our community, and our law enforcement profession.”
Johnson’s criminal history dates back to his early adulthood. In 2008 he pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon. In 2015 he admitted kidnapping an 18-year-old woman from St. Paul while she was unconscious, driving her to his apartment in Stillwater and raping her.
A Washington County judge gave Johnson a 77-month sentence and ordered him to register as a predatory offender for 10 years. Minnesota Department of Corrections records show that Johnson spent about four years, or two thirds of the sentence, in prison before he was put on supervised release, which is standard practice in Minnesota.
Johnson had been under the supervision of Scott County Community Corrections since buying a house in Shakopee late last year; that period of supervision was due to expire in 2029.