MONTICELLO, MN- An argument over a cat led to the murder of a Minnesota man by his girlfriend’s brothers, Local 12 WKRC, citing a report from Law & Crime.
A criminal complaint reviewed by the outlet revealed that on Sept. 3, officers were called to a residence in the Meadows Mobile Home Community after a woman told a 911 operator that she found her boyfriend “lying in bed with blood all over.”
On arrival, officers found 57-year-old Daniel Ferdelman dead from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to the complaint.
At around 12:15 a.m., the victim’s girlfriend, who was not identified, received a call while she was at work from Ferdelman, who told her that her brother, 48-year-old Steven Stahlberg, had barricaded their new cat in his room with him. Stahlberg lives with the couple.
A brief time later, Ferdelman told her that Stahlberg exited the room with the cat and shoved him, at which time he observed Stahlberg to be “drunk and belligerent.”
Shortly afterward, Ferdelman told her that Stahlberg again barricaded himself in his room; however, he soon thereafter left his room, barged into Ferdelman’s room, and told him he wanted to fight him. Ferdelman’s girlfriend told him that if the two men fought, “someone was going to get hurt.”
When Ferdelman’s girlfriend returned home after work, she discovered him on the bed with a gunshot wound to the chest and was unresponsive. She told officers that Stahlberg had taken a shotgun, and she believed he was on the way to their father’s home to kill him. She did not tell police why she believed that to be the case nor why her brother was agitated in the first place.
Police were able to identify a Toyota Tundra pickup truck owned by Stahlberg. A neighbor’s surveillance camera showed a man getting into the same pickup and leaving Stahlberg’s home at around 1:18 a.m.
At around 9:45 a.m., Stahlberg was stopped by police in a neighboring county, where police observed a loaded shotgun on the floorboard of his vehicle on the passenger side. He was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Law & Crime reported that he was being held at the Wright County jail on a $1 million bond with conditions or a $2 million bond without conditions. He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 21.
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