11 October 2023
DULUTH A Superior man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for kidnapping and raping a woman after a Hermantown bowling date last year.
Dakota Daniel Thorstenson, 29, received the sentence from Senior Judge Mary Yunker last week after a St. Louis County jury in July found him guilty of five charges including kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
The sentence is just 4 years shy of the statutory maximum, 30 years, for the sexual assault charge. And he still faces the prospect of additional prison time, as he is charged with similar offenses against a second woman.
According to court documents, the case stemmed from an Aug. 10, 2022, date with a woman Thorstenson had met on Facebook. After leaving the bowling alley, they got into a verbal argument and Thorstenson, still driving, allegedly reached out with his left hand and started to choke the woman.
A criminal complaint states that the car then struck two objects one apparently a fire hydrant and they got out to look at the damage.
While outside the vehicle, the woman reported that Thorstenson started to punch her in the face and choke her again. She tried to crawl away, but he dragged her back. He forced her back into the vehicle, and her purse fell out. A citizen who turned the purse in to Duluth police said it was found near 2001 Anderson Road.
Minutes after the assault, Thorstenson allegedly forced the woman to have sex in the car with him, according to the complaint. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a bed at an apartment on the 1200 block of Faxon Street in Superior.
The victim messaged her sister, who called 911. Superior police received the call at about 7:30 a.m. Aug. 11 and located Thorstenson and the victim in a room of the apartment.
The woman told officers that she asked to leave when the police arrived at the apartment, but Thorstenson told her not while the police were near. He locked the bedroom door and only allowed her to unlock it once officers threatened to kick the door in, according to the complaint. The woman described being fearful of leaving the residence alive.
The woman suffered numerous injuries, including a fractured clavicle and broken facial bones, according to emergency room records.
Defense attorney Rebecca Shaw filed a motion for a departure from sentencing guidelines, arguing a 12-year sentence was appropriate under the circumstances.
Shaw said Thorstenson and the woman met up that night for the sole purpose of having sex. Additionally, she argued the victim’s physical injuries were unrelated to the sexual assault and that she was never physically prevented from leaving Thorstenson’s house.
But St. Louis County prosecutor Michael Hagley sought the maximum, 30-year term, telling the court that Thorstenson “viciously physically and sexually assaulted the victim for declining to give him oral sex.”
“The victim began the evening of Aug. 11, 2022, expecting a bowling date with a casual fling,” Hagley wrote. “The victim ended her ordeal the following morning with multiple broken bones, naked in the defendant’s bed. The hours in between absolutely constitute the stuff of nightmares.”
Thorstenson still faces 11 pending felonies and one misdemeanor in three separate cases related to the second alleged victim.
Those charges include a July 2022 incident in which he allegedly abducted the woman from a downtown Duluth bar before physically and sexually assaulting her while holding her against her will at his Superior home.
Trial dates have yet to be set in those cases in either Minnesota or Wisconsin.
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