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SOUTHDALE012707
Last update: January 27, 2007 ? 12:09 AM
Drug raid closes shop at Southdale
Officers found suspected cocaine, marijuana and a bag with $8,000 at the store, which sells youth-oriented clothes.
By LORA PABST and J OY POWELL
Two brothers have been arrested after a drug raid at a clothing store they own at Southdale Center.
As early-morning mall walkers were exercising and stores were opening Thursday, officers from a joint suburban and county sheriff's drug unit raided Image, an apparel shop on the mall's youth-oriented third floor.
Acting on a tip that drugs were being sold there, officers searched the store and found brown paper bags with substances they believe to be cocaine and marijuana, and a bag filled with $8,000 in cash, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court Friday.
Friday night, Southdale employees and shoppers young and old expressed surprise. On the third floor, next to the food court where teens congregated, a large pull-down gate blocked the entrance to the store. Inside, oversized hiphop-style clothes hung from racks. Sneakers and baseball caps sat on shelves.
Dianne Porciello, a clerk at Davlin's gift shop, was not astonished. She had been watching the shop, which opened around Thanksgiving, but said she hardly ever saw anyone shopping for clothes.
Instead, people would "breeze in and out," she said.
"I couldn't believe a store like that opened in this mall," she said, "because the people that were in there were not the kind of people who would usually shop in the mall."
She and others at the mall, such as Ely Nelson, 18, of Eden Prairie, said that whenever they passed the store, they would see employees seated on the counter or standing around, often watching sports on a wide-screen television mounted behind the cash registers.
"They were just messing around, not even trying to get customers into the store," Nelson said.
Anne-Marie Cookson, spokeswoman for Southdale, which is owned by the Mills Corp. of Maryland, said that the mall hasn't been completely crime-free over the years but that a drug raid on shop owners is "an unusual thing."
Parents needn't worry about young people visiting the mall, she said. "We have Edina police here. We have a very strong record of safety."
Cookson wouldn't comment on how long the store had been open or the future of the business. But as a condition of their lease, she said, store owners are expected to abide by the law.
Officers had brought in a drug-sniffing dog named Kodiak to search the area around the store for signs of drugs. Law enforcement officials wouldn't comment on the amount or value of the drugs seized and whether the brothers were dealing drugs out of the store.
According to the affidavit, one of the brothers "has been arrested for narcotics violations in the past and is known to members of the Southwest Hennepin Drug Task Force as a suspected dealer and illegal drug user."
The brothers, ages 24 and 26, are from the Minneapolis area.
Sixteen-year-old Michael Jones and his friends, all of St. Paul, were among those startled by the news of the arrests.
"It's crazy," said Jones. "Yeah," said his friend, Kevin Greene, also 16, "it's messed up."
Nelson, the 18-year-old from Eden Prairie, shook her head at the thought.
"It's a mall," she said. "They shouldn't be doing that."
lpabst@startribune.com ? 612-673-4628
jpowell@startribune.com ? 612-673-7750
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