Trooper charged in fatal wreck suspended after prior crashes
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The Minnesota state trooper charged Tuesday with killing a woman during a high-speed chase in May had been suspended twice previously for crashing his squad car and received written reprimands for two other crashes.
In April of 2023, 13 months before he allegedly struck the Ford Focus in which Olivia Flores was riding, trooper Shane Roper tried to pull over a speeding driver along the same stretch of Highway 52 near the Apache Mall in Rochester.
According to his disciplinary record, which the Minnesota State Patrol released in response to a data request from MPR News, Roper chased the vehicle onto an exit ramp at 16th Street, lost control of his squad car and struck a cable barrier.
The dashboard camera was activated when Roper’s patrol car reached 90 miles per hour, and it was recording as he “cut across all lanes of traffic” in an attempt to catch the speeding driver, wrote Christina Bogojevic, who was then assistant chief of the State Patrol.
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Bogojevic, who became the agency’s chief in May, later suspended Roper for a day without pay. She noted in her report that neither Roper’s emergency lights nor his siren were activated at the time of the crash.
Many of the details from the 2023 incident are similar to those in the May 18 crash in which Flores was killed and five others were injured. Olmsted County prosecutors allege that Roper tried to chase a driver from the same Sixth Street entrance ramp to southbound Highway 52 after observing “an apparent petty traffic offense.”
According to the criminal complaint, he followed the vehicle onto 12th street at 83 miles per hour and struck the Focus as it was turning left into the mall.
Roper’s superiors previously imposed a one-day suspension for a May 2021 incident in which he failed to yield for a driver turning left at a stop sign in Rochester. According to the report, Roper “was not responding to any call for service” or pursuing a suspected traffic violator at the time.
Roper allegedly told investigators that he did not recall seeing the stop sign, “nor did he recall any events that led up to the crash.”
The trooper’s record includes a written reprimand for hitting a deer in December of 2021 while responding to a call for assistance from a Dodge County sheriff’s deputy. During that incident, then-Assistant Chief Rochelle Schrofer noted that Roper had been driving 77 miles per hour on a snow-packed road that has a 55 mile per hour speed limit.
Roper, who joined the State Patrol in early 2016, also received a written reprimand for crashing into another state vehicle and injuring the driver while responding to a call for assistance in February 2019.
Attorneys for the Flores family said Tuesday that they want Gov. Tim Walz and the Department of Public Safety to start an independent, third-party investigation to determine why Roper was allowed to remain on the road despite his record of reckless driving.
Roper, 32, is on paid leave as his criminal case moves forward. He is scheduled to make his first appearance before an Olmsted County judge on Aug. 29.