A Cloquet man faces charges in Carlton County Court following a bizarre incident that took place on Sunday, April 8, involving harassment of a couple, both in a Cloquet neighborhood and along I-35 at gunpoint.
Kevin Leo Martin, 45, is in custody following the incident and made his first appearance in Carlton County Court on Tuesday morning. Martin is being charged with two counts of second-degree assault, one count of harassment/stalking and one count of reckless driving in relation to the incidents.
According to the complaint filed in the case, Carlton County Dispatch received a report on Sunday stating a person driving a green Chevrolet Lumina was driving southbound on I-35 in Carlton County and reportedly driving erratically and waving a handgun at motorists.
The Minnesota State Patrol responded to the call, locating the vehicle and identifying the driver as Martin. The complaint went on to state officers found a loaded 0.32 caliber semi-automatic pistol inside Martin's vehicle, directly under the driver's seat. Also inside the vehicle, officers reportedly found a nearly full box of ammunition for the pistol, as well as numerous bottles of prescription medications.
In a later statement from the complainants, they told officers they had been visiting the parent of one of them in Cloquet over the weekend. They went on to state that on Saturday night, Martin knocked on the door of the parent's residence, allegedly making some disturbing and odd comments before finally taking his leave.
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The complainants said Martin then returned on Sunday morning and made some additional comments to them about the Mercedes car they were driving. Later that morning, as the couple departed the Cloquet residence to return to their home by way of 14th Street, they reportedly saw Martin, who was driving the green Lumina at the time. They stated he did an abrupt U-turn and began to follow them out onto I-35, eventually pulling up alongside their vehicle and pointing a handgun at them at several different points as they proceeded along their way. The couple stated Martin continued to drive erratically, cutting them off at various points and exiting briefly at the Highway 210 exit, only to run the stop sign at a high rate of speed and reemerge at the end of the ramp as the couple drove by.
After the couple called in the incident to Dispatch, Martin was stopped by authorities and subsequently taken into custody.
Following Martin's court appearance, bail was set and he was ordered to undergo an assessment at the Human Development Center in Cloquet and then report back to the judge for a follow-up hearing on Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m., as this issue of the Pine Journal was going to press.
Pine Journal Publisher/ reporter Wendy Johnson can be contacted at: wjohnson@pinejournal.com .
