Loring Park cashier killed remembered fondly by community members

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Neighbors are doing all they can to keep a light shining outside of the Oak Grove grocery store after a member of their tight-knit community was killed on Friday night near Loring Park. 

"I was in shock for a couple of days there," mourner Randy Zandt said. "I couldn’t feel anything for a while… he kept this community happy… I just wish someone had been there, but he was all alone."

Cashier Rober Skafte, 66, was brutally beaten and impaled with a golf club. Now, in documents for second-degree murder charges filed on Monday, authorities are shedding more light on the 44-year-old suspect Taylor Schulz.

"I have seen him out on the street before and I thought I want to steer clear of this guy because he looked a little funny to me, like there was something wrong with the guy," Zandt said. "He looked a little threatening to me, that kind of look that you get from someone."

Schulz was Skafte’s neighbor and lived across the street from the store. Police say he barricaded himself after the killing, inside a 16th floor apartment for six hours. 

On Nov. 30, Schulz had been ordered to vacate the residence after failing to show up to an eviction hearing. Back in 2021, he was committed to Mercy Hospital after being found mentally ill. By March of that year, he was discharged.

"He is somebody who shouldn’t have been on the street," neighbor Angela Otis said on Saturday. "And if they would have vacated him last week this would have never happened."

Skafte’s neighborhood is now grieving. 

Many on the street say they’ll remember the 66-year-old as a pillar of the community who showed great care for his relationships with neighbors, and his beautiful plants and flowers.

"He’s going to truly be missed, rest his soul," neighbor Henrietta Kinsey said.