Teen sentenced to 7 years in shooting case

Judge Eric Hylden told Roxanne Peterson that her words spoke to him. He said the pain and agony she described in a Duluth courtroom Tuesday is painfully familiar. He lost a teenage son in 2009.

Peterson had just given a victim impact statement regarding the 2020 death of her 16-year-old grandson, Cloquet resident Joe Peterson. A table away was the teenager who shot “Little Joe,” his cousin, Joseph Fohrenkam.

Judge Hylden made it official at Fohrenkam’s sentencing in St. Louis County District Court: He will serve 7 years in prison for shooting Peterson in the head while a group of boys were drinking in Fohrenkam’s truck in late 2020. The 84-month sentence is an upward departure from guidelines, with the chief reason being Peterson’s age. Attorneys for the state and Fohrenkam’s attorney, William Gatton, agreed to a plea in November.

Roxanne Peterson read her statement just before the sentencing. She said there remains an “emptiness inside all of us” since the shooting. She said she’s witnessed family members “cry over and over” and that there is a “hole in my family members’ hearts.” She said Joe’s death has been especially difficult for his twin brother. “He has lost his other half.” She said his sister laments that when her brother died, “he took a piece of me with him.”

The grandmother said Joe would want the family to forgive, but the “despair and hurt” lingers. She said a “choice was made” in the early hours of Dec. 28, 2020. She blames “a lack of identity, alcohol and drug abuse, and dysfunction in our Native American families."

Roxanne Peterson said she will try to remedy that by creating a turtle lodge, a place where young people can gather and find a bond to traditional Native culture, so they can find an “identity and uniqueness.”

Judge Hylden said he recognized the pain and was heartened by Peterson’s final words. “What I heard at the end of your letter was hope and action.”

Fohrenkam’s attorney, William Gaddon, said the negotiations around the plea and eventual sentencing were “fair and just.” He said Peterson’s words were appropriate. Fohrenkam, who is now 19, dropped out of school and turned to drugs and alcohol, Gaddon said. “He was what I call a lost boy.”

Gaddon told Fohrenkam, who declined saying anything at the sentencing, that he hopes his time in prison will allow him to “repair his life.”

“Hope and action,” Gaddon said, echoing the judge’s words. “I ask the same of my client.”

Hylden told Fohrenkam that when his time is served, he will still be relatively young and encouraged him to “make changes in your life and community.”

The 7-year sentence is nearly double what statute recommends. He will serve at least two-thirds of the sentence and be eligible for supervised release for the last third. He was given credit for time served in custody since January of 2021.

Fohrenkam signed off on the plea knowing that the prosecution was seeking an aggravated sentence of 84 months. A charge of third-degree murder — with a maximum sentence of 25 years — was dismissed in return for the plea.

According to the criminal complaint, Joseph Fohrenkam was drinking with four other young men, all of them friends, on Dec. 27 last year in his parked truck outside a home on the 3600 block of Giiniw Road, on the Fond du Lac Reservation in St. Louis County. According to three witnesses, they were just drinking and talking, not arguing. Fohrenkam allegedly had a pistol, which he was “showing off” and “waving around,” witnesses said. At least two of the witnesses said they thought Fohrenkam may have hit his arm on the center console when he was handling it, causing the pistol to discharge. Joe Peterson was seated in the middle of the back seat. The bullet hit him below his left eye and killed him.

Fohrenkam fled the area with his mother, Little Fawn Fohrenkam, after the shooting. They were discovered two weeks later in an apartment in Mahnomen, Minnesota. They had both shaved their heads to alter their appearances. Little Fawn told police she drove her son away from the scene to protect him and hid him from law enforcement. She received a sentence of one year and a day in October, but it was stayed for three years and instead she was placed on supervised probation.

A witness at the scene remains in the judicial process, charged with aiding in a felony case for hiding Fohrenkam’s gun, a 9 mm Glock 17.