Minnesota AG releases documents he says prove Fleet Farm willfully ignored straw buyer warning

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison released nearly 700 documents Wednesday in his office's investigation into Fleet Farm, alleging the company "ignored an internal warning" about selling firearms to a "straw buyer."

In February, the Wisconsin-based retailer settled a lawsuit filed by Ellison in 2022 accusing the company of selling nearly 40 firearms to straw purchasers — people who legally buy guns with the intent to sell to those ineligible to do so themselves — in a span of a year and a half.

One of these guns, purchased by Jerome Horton, was used in the 2021 Truck Park bar mass shooting in St. Paul, which killed 27-year-old Marquisha Wiley.

"Things like this kind of help us get through," Beth Wiley, Marquisha Wiley's mother, said Wednesday during a news conference held by Ellison.

Also at Wednesday's conference was Michael Norseng, whose son found a straw buyer-purchased gun in a yard.

"Anything that moves the needle forward in gun violence prevention and protecting our kids is a step in the right direction," Norseng said.

As part of the settlement, Fleet Farm paid a $1 million fine and agreed to change its policies around detection and prevention of straw purchaser sales, as well as bolstering employee training, introducing new software to track gun sales across its stores and instituting a monitoring system that alerts staff to purchasers linked to gun crimes.

That year, Fleet Farm told WCCO they had strongly disagreed with the lawsuit. The winter after the settlement, they said they were pleased to have reached a resolution and condemned gun violence. 

Fleet Farm recently filed a petition for summary judgement in the settled case, which sparked Ellison's move to release the documents pointing to the retailer's negligence, including an incident report email from a store manager regarding his concern over selling firearms to Horton. Ellison says that email was sent to the company's firearms compliance team, but a team member admitted to disregarding the email in a deposition.  

Also released Wednesday is an employee training video and PowerPoint presentation about straw buyers, which uses Horton's case as an example of what to look for and how to alert the compliance team.

"It's no wonder Fleet Farm fought to keep these documents private. Now they're gonna be public," Ellison said. "People deserve the truth. They deserve to know what these companies did to us and our families."

In 2024, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law that boosts criminal penalties for straw purchasers in the aftermath of the standoff in Burnsville that led to the deaths of two police officers and a firefighter.

Shannon Gooden, who died by suicide in the standoff, was a convicted felon and was barred from buying and owning firearms and ammunition, but acquired them from girlfriend Ashley Drydahl. She pleaded guilty to straw purchasing and is in the midst of a nearly four-year prison sentence.

WCCO reached out to Fleet Farm again Wednesday for comment and are awaiting a reply.