A Hennepin County judge found a Brooklyn Park man not guilty by reason of mental illness in a deadly 2021 hit-and-run killing and a separate 2020 carjacking case.<\/p>\n
RELATED: Man charged with intentional second-degree murder in deadly Brooklyn Park crash<\/a><\/p>\n According to a court order signed on Tuesday, a Hennepin County judge ruled the state proved all charges against Christopher Dewayne Rice beyond a reasonable doubt. The order says Rice was found not guilty by reason of mental illness in both cases and that his current civil commitment must continue.<\/p>\n The court order says Rice admitted to police he hit 65-year-old Paul Pfeifer with a black Chevrolet Traverse on June 12, 2021, near Scott Circle North in Brooklyn Park and drove away without checking on him. Pfeifer was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.<\/p>\n Court records say witnesses saw a black SUV leave the area. A Minnesota State Patrol crash reconstruction report concluded Rice intentionally left the roadway, drove onto a grass area and struck Pfeifer from behind.<\/p>\n The court found was liable for second-degree intentional murder, second-degree murder while committing felony assault and criminal vehicular homicide for leaving the scene. However, court records say a mental health evaluation found Rice was experiencing psychosis and schizophrenia at the time and did not know his acts were wrong.<\/p>\n In the second case, the court order says Brooklyn Park police responded June 15, 2020, to a report of an assault and carjacking near Scott Circle North. Court filings say Rice hit a neighbor, then jumped into a woman\u2019s car and drove off while she was near the open passenger door, injuring her.<\/p>\n Rice later admitted he knew the car was not his and he was told he could not take the car by the victim.<\/p>\n In that case, a judge also found Rice liable for first-degree aggravated robbery, but the same mental health evalution concluded Rice was experiencing psychosis, including hallucinations and delusions, and did not know his acts were wrong.<\/p>\n Rice remains under civil commitment as mentally ill and dangerous under a separate court file, according to the order. The judge ordered that commitment to continue under court supervision.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Aquittal<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Brooklyn Park<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Court<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Hennepin County<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Hennepin County judge found a Brooklyn Park man not guilty by reason of mental illness in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[121285,98,100,99,5796,2803,9230,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-321844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-aquittal","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-park","tag-court","tag-hennepin-county","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}