ROCHESTER, Minn. – A man accused of violence with a crowbar gets his criminal charge dismissed.
Eric John Norrie, 50 of Fort Collins, Colorado, was arrested in Rochester on July 24, 2021.
The Rochester Police Department says Norrie was given a ticket for a hit and run before he returned to the site of the area where it happened to take pictures. Investigators say that’s where Norrie got into a confrontation with another person in a vehicle that ended in a head-on collision.
Court documents accuse Norrie of using a crowbar to break the windshield of the other vehicle and attack a man.
Norrie was charged with second-degree riot but that has now been thrown out by a judge. Norrie argued that the riot statute only applies to groups of three or more people assembled together and while there were three people involved in this incident, they were not one group but were fighting each other. The judge agreed that did not fit the legal definition of a riot and dismissed the charge against Norrie.
