Fatal Mankato shooting leads to murder charges for Arlington man

Lights on a police cruiser are seen in a file image. (Credit: FOX Television Stations)

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Stock image of police lights. (FOX TV Stations / FOX 9)

MANKATO, Minn. (FOX 9) - A man accused of fatally shooting another man in a North Mankato apartment has been charged with murder and other alleged crimes related to the shooting.

Court documents show Dominic Scott Ellen, 41, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, multiple assault charges, threats of violence and possessing a gun that didn't have a serial number.

What we know

Officers with the North Mankato Police Department say they responded to an apartment complex in the 1600 block of Hoover Drive around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday after someone reported talking to a woman on the phone at that location and that there was yelling in the background.

A woman then came out of the apartment complex and said "please help me" to the responding officer before she ran out of the building. When the officer caught up with her, she said several times she was scared for her life but would not explain what happened, according to the criminal complaint.

Another officer then arrived and spoke to the woman, who said she "killed her boyfriend" and "asked to be placed in handcuffs", which police did not do, the complaint states. She would later say she did not kill her boyfriend and only claimed she did because she "panicked".

Other police then returned to the apartment unit and knocked for several minutes before they heard a man's voice inside. When officers asked the man to come outside, he opened the door slightly and police saw a dead body on the apartment floor.

Ellen then came out of the apartment and was handcuffed. Officers say they found a handgun without a serial number in his waistband as well as spent shell casings and live handgun rounds in his pocket.

Police then entered the apartment and saw a head wound on the body of a 27-year-old man. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner's Office would later rule the cause of death as being a homicide from multiple gunshot wounds after finding he was also shot in the chest and abdomen.

Surviving victim's account

The woman was taken to the hospital for evaluation and interviewed by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, according to the criminal complaint.

She told investigators that her boyfriend was afraid of a man named "Dom", later identified as Dominic Scott Ellen, and that all three of them were in the apartment unit. She also said that when her boyfriend went outside to smoke, Dom said to her that her boyfriend "was going to have to die."

The woman said she was in the bedroom when she heard gunshots and came out to find her boyfriend shot in the head. It was around this time that the woman got a call from the person who would later call 911.

The woman told police that Ellen was demanding money and that she was calling several people to get the money. She also said that Ellen wiped the gun off with his shirt and placed her hand on the weapon.

When officers arrived, Ellen told the woman to "get rid of the police", according to the criminal complaint. She also said she was scared that Ellen would send someone to hurt her children and that she claimed to kill her boyfriend because she panicked.

The woman said that Ellen pointed the gun at her, and she said to him that she didn't want to die, according to court documents.