A white Minneapolis man was charged Thursday with attempted murder after he allegedly shot his black neighbor in the neck for touching a tree following an ongoing dispute, but the failure of police to arrest the suspect angered council members the city.

The The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has filed charges against John Herbert Sawchak in connection with the Wednesday shooting of Davis Moturi.

The bureau said it received the case Thursday and immediately charged Sawchak with attempted murder, first-degree assault and harassment and racially-enhanced prosecution, NBC affiliate KARE of Minneapolis reported.

At the time of the shooting, Sawchak had three active arrest warrants against him, including one for threats of violence against Moturi, court documents state.

As of Saturday afternoon, Sawchak had not been arrested by Minneapolis police. A spokesman said they had “every intention of arresting him”.

On Wednesday, Moturi was trimming a tree on his property when he was shot. Court documents show Sawchak shot his neighbor in the neck with a firearm from an open upstairs window.

Moturi fractured his spine, has two broken ribs and a concussion, his wife, Caroline, said in a phone interview Saturday.

Sawchak, 54, could not be reached at a phone number listed for him.

Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference Friday, officers responded to the hospital on reports of a gunshot victim. Moturi told them that his neighbor threatened to shoot him “if he touches a certain tree”. While Moturi was cutting the tree, he was shot.

The chief said Sawchak was not arrested because he is “mentally ill” and owns firearms. Sawchak has had “violent confrontations” in the past and refused to cooperate dozens of times when officers responded to his home, O’Hara said.

Court documents show Sawchak suffers from mental illness and “paranoid personality disorder.”

“We have been working to arrest the suspect in this case since at least April of this year, when the harassment charges were first dismissed by the county prosecutor’s office and then filed with the city prosecutor’s office,” the police chief told reporters. “No Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case called us.”

O’Hara said executing a warrant would be considered high risk.

“Based on our assessment, the likelihood of an armed and violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect in this case is high,” he said. “We wanted to arrest the suspect where he would be least likely to have access to firearms. That’s outside the residence.”

The chief said Sawchak is a “recluse” who doesn’t leave his home often. A police spokesman did not have a timeline on when a possible arrest might be made.

The delay in Sawchak’s arrest angered some members of the Minneapolis City Council. Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley sent a letter to O’Hara and Mayor Jacob Frey accusing police of failing to protect “a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and widely reported threat posed by by his neighbor. ,” according to Minnesota Star Tribune.

Jenkins told reporters after the police chief’s news conference that violent criminals need to be taken off the street.

“I’m not a police officer, I don’t know how it’s done, but I know it has to be done,” Jenkins said.

O’Hara said anyone suggesting police don’t want to arrest Sawchak is “simply wrong.” Frey’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“To be honest, the officers are scared though. They are afraid of being prosecuted if they end up in a situation where they make a mistake trying to do their job and protect the public,” the police chief said in the news conference.

Last year, the Minneapolis Police Department was at the center of a federal investigation that was launch behind him The killing of George Floyd in 2020. The Justice Department found that the department and the city had a pattern of excessive force and racial discrimination which violated both the US Constitution and federal law.

“If we went into a SWAT team and got into a deadly force situation, the headlines would say ‘MPD shoots mentally ill person,'” the chief said.

Moturi, 34, said the police’s failure to help him is why he is now in hospital.

“In the emails, I specifically said that it would take something very, very bad to happen before anything would end,” he said in a phone interview from the hospital. “And something really bad happened and he’s still on the loose.”

Moturi and his wife said their problems with Sawchak began after they moved into their home in September 2023. Initially, they said it came because Moturi wanted to cut down a tree on his property.

“I went to approach him about the tree, as any good neighbor should … and he just wasn’t having it. He started getting very aggressive, calling me names,” Moturi said. “I thought he was having a bad day, so I left and I came back and he kept making threats and saying all kinds of racially charged things,” Ghetto told me.

Problems with Sawchak soon escalated, according to Moturi, who said Sawchak started doing things like splashing water on the side of the house and using a blower to keep him awake.

It got so bad that Moturi installed cameras outside to capture his neighbor’s behavior. According to Moturi, while he was setting up the cameras, he says Sawchak tried to attack him.

Moturi said he had to spray Sawchak to get him to back off.

During another incident in April, Moturi said Sawchak attacked him with a shovel while he was cleaning his yard.

Moturi said he and his wife called and emailed police dozens of times, but Sawchak was never arrested.

Court documents showed Sawchak has a long history of alleged threats and acts of violence. In January 2016, he allegedly verbally harassed a neighbor while holding a knife and threatened to kill a neighbor, documents say.

In June of that year, he allegedly used a knife to slash the tires of an off-duty police officer’s vehicle. Other cases mentioned in the document claimed that he tried to hit a neighbor with a motorized bicycle, threatened to ambush and shoot his sister, hit a neighbor with a wooden stick causing injuries, threatened to will put a neighbor in the hospital and threw a shovel. to a neighbor.

He has been arrested several times over the years on suspicion of second-degree assault and misdemeanor assault/harassment, court documents state.

This month, Sawchak was charged with wielding a knife and threatening to kill his neighbor, pointing a gun at his neighbor as he stood outside the neighbor’s window and shooting the neighbor in the neck, according to documents.

The court filing also accuses Sawchak of violating multiple restraining orders for harassment. He has had 13 harassment restraining orders filed against him since 2007, the most recent by Moturi, who said Sawchak “threatened to put him in a hospital while holding a gun.”

Another restraining order filed by another person expired earlier this month, according to court documents.