A 20-year-old man has admitted to shooting a sheriff's deputy in the back in northwestern Minnesota, then fleeing for about two hours with 70 officers in pursuit.
Steven A. Henderson, whose last known address was Fertile, Minn., pleaded guilty Wednesday in Norman County District Court to first-degree attempted murder of a peace officer, transporting stolen property into the state and receiving stolen property.
Deputy Nathan Warner survived the shooting on the morning of April 15 thanks to his bullet-resistant vest. Gunfire also struck his portable radio on the front of his vest. He was checked out at a Fargo hospital and released.
The guilty plea comes with no agreement on what sentence Henderson receives during a hearing set for Jan. 7, the county attorney's office said.
According to court records:
Henderson was driving from Oklahoma to Minnesota with his 19-year-old brother, William P. Henderson, in the passenger seat of a stolen pickup truck with no license plates on County Road 39 near Perley.
When Warner stopped the vehicle, he determined that the brother was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in a Pennington County court to answer a misdemeanor allegation, and Warner put him in the back of his squad car. It was then that Steven Henderson grabbed a handgun that had been stolen in Nebraska from the glove compartment, shot Warner and drove off.
The manhunt located Steven Henderson a few miles away in woods near a vacant Mary Township farmstead. He surrendered without incident.
Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482
