The unhinged leftist who killed a conservative North Dakota teen after stalking him and then snuffing out his young life by using his SUV as a murder weapon following an alleged disagreement pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the September 2022 death of 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson.
In the shocking incident that drew national headlines and served as an example of how the media and Democrat politicians’ constant demonization of Trump supporters can drive unstable people to act out violently, then-41-year-old Shannon Brandt took his argument with Ellingson to extremes, engaging in a cruel cat and mouse pursuit through the streets of McHenry while the terrified teen called his mother on his cellphone, pleading with her to come and rescue him in the minutes before he was chased into an alley by the killer who cornered him. Ellingson would not get out of the alley alive.
(Video: YouTube/Valley News Live)
On Thursday, Brandt, who is now 42, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge weeks after a leftist DA unexpectedly and inexplicably dropped the more serious murder charge, allowing Ellingson’s killer. who reportedly referred to his victim as a “Republican extremist” on the night of the incident, to potentially have years shaved off of any prison sentence although the manslaughter charge could still be punishable by up to ten years behind bars.
“Shannon has never denied responsibility for his part in this tragic accident,” Brandt’s attorney, Mark Friese, said in an email to the Fargo-Moorhead Forum. “A plea of guilty permits him to accept responsibility while limiting the stress and emotional toll for all involved.”
Foster County State Attorney Kara Brinster said in a news release that Brandt had been drinking on the night that he ran down Ellingson with his 2003 Ford Explorer, before he then drove over the teen’s torso and legs, killing him.
(Video: YouTube/InForum/WDAY)
“He was threatening me with something to have to do with — something with an extremist Republican group. And then he made a phone call. He made a phone call saying, ‘I thought he was Republican (background noise) or something. You’re going have to come here and handle him.’ I got scared to death. I didn’t know what to do,” a transcript of the killer’s 911 call, after he ran down the youngster, says.
The incident occurred weeks after President Joe Biden’s infamous “soul of a nation” speech, one in which the demagogic authoritarian leader effectively declared voters of the opposition party as enemies of the state in an eerie setting at Philadelphia’s historic Independence Hall with blood red lighting that some likened to an address by a classic fascist dictator.
“The truth of all of this is this was a tragic accident,” Friese said, according to News Dakota. “The State Medical Examiner’s Office has concluded it was an accident. Mr. Brandt from the very beginning, and consistently, has said that he was simply trying to avoid the confrontation, and in the process of trying to get away, the accident happened.”
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