I described the shooting by Lake Gilchrist last week to a retired Minnesota State Patrol officer today. He retired in 1999 at the end of a 31-year career serving east central Minnesota.
He said that a Grand Jury will review all the evidence presented by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Pope County Sheriff's Office and then decide if charges should be pressed and what type of charges. The BCA will review text messaging, phone call logs as well as Facebook and other social media accounts while also looking at results of the toxicology reports and material gathered at the scene of the shooting as well as oral interviews.
These comments of his stood out while we talked, "Law enforcement and the judicial system takes the loss of life very seriously in any case where someone takes the life of another person. It doesn't matter what the past history is of the deceased or the circumstances of what happened. They will get to the bottom of it. Many of the questions people may have right now about what happened will be answered once the Grand Jury has reviewed everything. Right now there's very little information that can be released in a case like that."
Click here to read more on what a Grand Jury is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_jury
Here's more specific information on Minnesota's Grand Jury:
Hennepin County keeps a grand jury impaneled at all times. Each grand jury serves a
term of four months, typically meets one day each week, and focuses
almost exclusively on homicide cases.