Woman Arrested, Booked For Murder In Roommate's Death
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (WCCO) -- It was just after 8 p.m. Sunday when Bloomington police were called to the Southgate apartments.
That's where, in a second floor unit, they discovered the body of 69-year-old Corrine Louise Gibbs.
"If it's from natural causes, fine, but if not, I don't feel safe," said Meseret Shawo, who lives in a unit downstairs.
As it turned out, it was not from natural causes.
Shawo recalls hearing what he describes as noises coming from the upstairs apartment.
Police say they are unaware of any previous calls to the unit that Gibbs shared with two other roommates.
"Right above me, I heard a lot of commotion," Shawo said. "It was the sound of (a lot of) movement."
Police were initially responding to what was reported as a possible suicide. That soon changed once investigators began examining the evidence.
"They determined that things looked suspicious and some of the evidence made it apparent that this was not a self-inflicted wound," said Bloomington Deputy Chief Mike Hartley.
Forty-six-year-old Donna Mae Bastyr was Gibbs's roommate. Bastyr was soon arrested nearby and booked on probable cause murder.
"It doesn't happen here often but it makes me feel good we've got a person in custody," Hartley said.
The investigation is continuing and police can't yet say how or why Gibbs was killed.