A 24-year-old St. Cloud man is facing four felony charges after prosecutors say he forced his domestic partner to drive him around the area while threatening to kill her, her brother, and a convenience store clerk. Waite Park police arrested Abdi Mohamed Dakane on Tuesday, September 8, ending an ordeal that began when the woman returned home from the Minnesota State Fair.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Stearns County District Court and reported by WJON, Dakane is accused of entering the victim's car after she got back from the fair. When the woman told him she needed to drop off fair food for a friend, prosecutors say Dakane instead forced her to drive him and another unidentified man around, according to the complaint. A witness later told a second witness that Dakane had taken the victim, and that second witness said she heard Dakane yelling at the woman and telling her to drive, per the same account.
The witness also reported seeing Dakane hit the victim on the right side of her head, WJON reports. As the situation unfolded, the second witness tracked the victim's vehicle through the Life360 app and called her by phone, while a friend went to the victim's car to retrieve the fair food, according to the complaint cited by the station.
The National Institute of Justice lists technology-facilitated abuse in intimate-partner violence as a research topic, including a project titled "Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): An Exploration of Costs and Consequences."
Threats Escalate at a St. Cloud Kwik Trip
Court records show Dakane allegedly prevented the victim from exiting the vehicle and, at one point, forced her to drive to a Kwik Trip. There, prosecutors say, he made her buy Swisher Sweets cigarillos. A Kwik Trip employee reported that Dakane became upset when he was carded for the purchase, and a clerk told investigators she saw what appeared to be a handgun in his waistband, the station's report states.
Per the charges, Dakane threatened to shoot and kill the Kwik Trip employee and claimed multiple times that he had knives and a gun. He also threatened to kill the clerk, according to the complaint, before the group left the store. Dakane is accused of telling the victim and her brother that he would kill them as well, and he allegedly told officers he did not care about the police, per the same account.
Eventually, Dakane stopped the car so the two men could get out, before Waite Park police found and arrested him on Tuesday. Waite Park sits directly west of St. Cloud within Stearns County.
Four Felonies and a Recent Pattern of Charges
Dakane faces one felony kidnapping charge, one felony false imprisonment charge, two felony threats of violence charges, and two misdemeanor domestic assault charges, WJON reports. Under Minnesota Statute § 609.25, felony kidnapping carries a maximum of up to 20 years in prison and a $35,000 fine if the victim is released safely without great bodily harm, or up to 40 years if she is not, according to the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. The threats of violence counts are charged under Minnesota Statute § 609.713, while the false imprisonment charge is brought under Minnesota Statute § 609.255, per the same office.
According to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's 2024 Uniform Crime Report, there were 14,991 total violent crimes in Minnesota in 2024.
This is not Dakane's first brush with the Stearns County court system this year. On August 6, he was convicted and sentenced in Stearns County District Court on a felony charge tied to fleeing police in a stolen vehicle, according to Stearns and Benton County Crime Watch. In April, he was accused in St. Cloud of stealing a vehicle shortly after being released from the Stearns County Jail, reportedly claiming he was cold walking home, and in May he was charged in Hennepin County with felony financial transaction card fraud without consent, according to MN CRIME.
Local Resources for Domestic Violence Survivors
Stearns County has built institutional infrastructure around cases like this one. St. Cloud-based Anna Marie's Alliance operates a 36-bed emergency shelter serving Stearns, Benton, Sherburne, Wright, and Mille Lacs counties and offers a 24/7 crisis line, according to the organization's listed profile. The county also runs an 11-member Domestic Violence Partnership formed in 2008, with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid involved, as reported by Minnesota Women's Press.
In this case, real-time location sharing played a role in locating the victim. Whether Dakane was under any form of supervision at the time of this incident, and the identity of the second man in the vehicle, remain unresolved as the case moves through Stearns County District Court.
