A North Dakota lawyer allegedly beat his ex-wife to dying in Minnesota on Tuesday as she clung to the youngest of their 5 youngsters and two others screamed for assist, in line with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Workplace.
The youthful boy, 2, was so traumatized he didn’t reply to questions from deputies after they’d his father in custody and rushed his mom to the hospital.
Anders Odegaard, 31, and Carissa Odegaard, additionally 31, divorced final yr, court docket data present.
In a custody dispute this week, he allegedly refused to let her take their children to church and a combat broke out, deputies wrote within the prison grievance after interviewing the kids.
Two of their boys ran exterior, flagged a stranger and begged him to name 911 “as a result of their mother was bleeding actually unhealthy and wanted assist,” in line with the grievance.
The primary responding deputy discovered Anders Odegaard within the kitchen sporting simply his underwear, with blood on his face and in his hair. Carissa Odegaard was unresponsive mendacity in a doorway — with a pool of blood round her head.
The deputy requested him to elucidate the state of affairs.
“I don’t really feel proper,” Odegaard replied, in line with the grievance.
The deputy discovered that Carissa Odegaard was not respiratory. He cuffed the ex-husband and tried CPR on the sufferer. He observed “extreme head trauma” and known as for an ambulance.
The 9-year-old boy advised investigators he noticed his father strike his mom with a knife or spatula within the head moments earlier than he ran exterior and located somebody to name 911, in line with authorities. He additionally advised deputies he’d seen his father hit is mom earlier than.
Three brothers, ages 9, 8 and a pair of, had been inside through the assault. Two different siblings had been exterior of their mother’s automobile and had been spared the horror, in line with the grievance.
The 8-year-old advised investigators that after beating his mom to the ground, his father “was on high of her choking her.”
“There was blood throughout,” he advised deputies, and when he tapped his mom’s foot, she didn’t reply to the contact.
Courtroom data present the Odegaards married in Might 2011 and formally divorced on Sept. 16, 2021, on the grounds that their marriage was “irretrievably damaged.” The slaying comes simply days earlier than the ex-couple was due in court docket for a evaluate listening to.
The dad and mom had been granted shared authorized custody, however the court docket gave Carissa Odegaard bodily custody. Authorized custody, below Minnesota regulation, means the fitting to be concerned in “main choices figuring out the kid’s upbringing.” Bodily custody means “routine day by day care and management of the residence.”
Anders Odegaard, within the submitting finalizing their divorce final yr, was described because the Mercer County State’s Lawyer in North Dakota.
Marshall County Lawyer Donald Aandal advised Fox Information Digital he didn’t need to go into element concerning the case, citing the energetic investigation, however mentioned Odegaard’s full work historical past was not readily clear and that he’d switched careers a number of occasions.
In response to the Mercer County State’s Lawyer’s Workplace, Odegaard held the job for 3 months, from June to September 2021, earlier than being fired. He spent three months as a public defender in Stark County, North Dakota, and was fired once more. After one other temporary stint at a non-public apply, he moved again to Minnesota.
Odegaard faces a most sentence of 40 years in jail if convicted on the second-degree homicide cost. Prosecutors are additionally searching for aggravated expenses as a result of “the sufferer was handled with explicit cruelty” and since there have been a number of little one witnesses.
He made his first court docket look Thursday and was ordered held on $5 million bond with out situations, $2,500,000 surety bond or $250,000 money.
Carissa Odegaard was pronounced brain-dead at Sanford Hospital in Fargo, North Dakota, on Aug. 24. She was being stored on life help till her organs could possibly be donated.
