On Tuesday, November 27 at about 9:00 PM, Joshua Carl Hendrickson (pictured right), age 40, and Brady Ray Veselka, age 33, (no known permanent address for either at this time) were taken into custody at 332 Lincoln Ave. in Crookston without incident. Hendrickson had a felony warrant for violations related to his release from prison. Veselka had a warrant for probation
violations.
The incident initially began with a Pine to Prairie Drug Task Force investigation and surveillance. The Task Force obtained information that there was a high likelihood Hendrickson and Veselka were inside the residence at 332 Lincoln Ave. At approximately 3:30 PM the Task Force was able to corroborate this information.
With the help of all participating agencies, at approximately 7:30 PM traffic in the area was rerouted and some residential evacuations were made in the vicinity. Contact was eventually made with the suspects, who exited the residence peacefully.
The Task Force and the Crookston Police Department were assisted by the Grand Forks Regional Special Operations Group, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the MN State Patrol, Crookston Ambulance and the Crookston Fire Department.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections says Hendrickson, of Karlstad, was released from the St. Cloud prison last year after serving 18 years for fatally stabbing Christopher Nelson and injuring a second man. The stabbings happened at a house party in Halma.
KROX met with Crookston Police Chief Paul Biermaier just past 12:00 a.m. to get an official statement on Tuesday’s police activity:
“This investigation originally started with the Pine to Prairie Drug Taskforce with an unrelated investigation and surveillance earlier this morning. Shortly after noon, they started getting information that Joshua Hendrickson was possibly at this residence, 332 Lincoln Avenue. By 3:15 or so they were able to pretty much corroborate it, so we started making plans, moved through the steps. [We] got a hold of the Grand Forks Regional SOG, special operations group, and they arrived around that 5:30 timeframe and by 7:30 we were all out there. The Grand Forks Regional SOG, that includes SWAT, negotiations, robots, bomb guys, just a huge resource for us. By nine o’clock Hendrickson and another guy had come out peacefully. It took a little while to get that contact with him, but they came out, no force was used, no weapons, it all went so well. Hendrickson, of course, has been on the run for violations of his release since he got out of prison. The other guy had some probation violations warrants for him also. All in all, the night was very successful, we did shut down some traffic, we rerouted Highway 2. We did some residential evacuations in the immediate area to be on the safe side, but very successful, very happy. We thank everybody for their assistance coming out and helping us tonight.”
