A St. Anthony man fatally stabbed a maintenance worker and severely injured a 15-year-old boy in the hallway of their St. Anthony apartment building early Saturday, according to charges.

Jonathon Michael Kaupa, 31, is jailed and charged in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree murder in connection with the stabbings at Equinox Apartments located in the 2800 block of Silver Lane, just west of Silver Lake Road. Authorities have not released the identity of the man who was killed; the criminal complaint says he was 44 years old and lived across the hallway from Kaupa.

Kaupa was arrested later that morning near Duluth. His attorney contacted police and told them not to talk to him, according to the complaint, which does not offer a motive for the stabbings.

Kaupa had a first appearance on the charges Monday and remained jailed on $5 million bail. An attorney for Kaupa is not listed in the court file.

What happened

The complaint gives the following account of the incident:

St. Anthony police responded to the apartment complex and found the man dead on the floor of a third-floor hallway, with stab wounds to his neck and upper body. Blood spatter covered the walls and front doors of nearby apartment units.

Officers saw “some sort of carving” on the outside door of the man’s apartment, the complaint states. A young girl exited the apartment and said her brother was inside, where the teen was found facedown with stab wounds to his arms, chest, neck and head.

Before he was rushed to Hennepin County Medical Center, the teen told police the man who stabbed him came from the apartment across the hall. Officers learned that Kaupa lived in the unit.

The teen’s sister told police she and her brother were awakened by the sound of sawing noises at their door. The teen checked the door, saw a man and alerted the 44-year-old man, who was sleeping in the apartment. The teen and man left the apartment, and the girl heard screaming. The teen, who’d been stabbed, went back into the apartment and called 911.

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While officers were at the apartment building, a driver of a ride-booking service showed up and said she had picked up a suspicious man just north of the apartment complex about 5:30 a.m. and took him to his parents’ home in St. Paul. The driver said the man had been lying in a snowbank and was not wearing proper clothing for the cold temperatures when she picked him up.

The man, later identified from the ride-booking app as Kaupa, asked the driver to charge his phone, which he said had “fish guts” on it. The driver noticed he had on just one tan mitt-style glove and carried a bag with clothes stained with blood.

“(The driver) thought the interaction was so strange she returned to the area and sought out an officer,” the complaint states.

Mental health issues

Kaupa’s father also showed up at the apartment building looking for him. He told officers Kaupa suffers from mental health issues and had been hospitalized for mental health crises in 2022 and again in March.

Jonathon Michael Kaupa (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

He said Kaupa sent a text message to him at 6 a.m. that read “sorry” and that he then showed up at his home and asked to borrow his Mercedes-Benz. His father told police Kaupa may be headed to their cabin in Two Harbors.

Kaupa had told his parents that his neighbor who lived across the hall from him does maintenance work for the building and enters his apartment. “They were not sure if the neighbor actually entered Kaupa’s apartment or if the belief was the result of Kaupa’s paranoia,” the complaint states.

Officers executed a search warrant on Kaupa’s apartment and garage. They found a rope they believe he used to leave the building from the balcony. Inside his Volkswagen, officers recovered a metal tin that contained a powder that tested positive for the presence of amphetamines.

The mother of the teen and the girl told police she had left work before the stabbings. She said they had placed a camera in the hall because someone had placed glue on their doorframe. Someone damaged the camera a month earlier, so they put up a new camera. She also said the man killed was the maintenance worker for the apartment building.

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Man killed, boy injured in St. Anthony stabbing

The teen later told police he awoke to a “Sawzall noise” coming from the hallway during the night. He said he opened the door and saw a man, who tried to push the door. The man then emerged from the apartment across the hallway with a sharp weapon like a screwdriver. He pushed the teen and man, and a fight ensued.

The teen told police a doctor told him he had been stabbed 20 times.

Kaupa, during his booking into jail, said he had ingested prescription medication and was suffering from withdrawals from medication and alcohol. He also had a laceration on his wrist, but could not explain how it happened, the complaint says.

On Sunday, an officer found a tan mitt-style glove in the area where Kaupa was picked up for a ride.