On the evening of January 8, 2024, Patrick Jeffrey Roers, a 35-year-old male, was resting in his vehicle in the parking lot of the Super 8 motel in Cloquet, Minnesota. He was in town for his first week of training at a new job as a tree excavator. After finishing a pizza in his hotel room, he went to his car to relax and listen to music, a favorite pastime.
Around 6:30 p.m., while he was texting his parents about plans to come home for the weekend, a sequence of tragic and random events began to unfold.
Inside the motel, a 32-year-old guest from Ramsey named Nicholas Elliot Lenius, shot and killed a 22-year-old hotel clerk, Shellby Marie Trettel. After attacking the employee, Lenius exited the building and encountered Roers sitting in his truck. For reasons that remain unknown, Lenius shot Roers multiple times before turning the gun on himself, ending his own life on the hotel grounds. Law enforcement found Roers deceased in his vehicle.
The investigation that followed involved multiple agencies, which utilized surveillance footage from the hotel to piece together the timeline of the horrific events. The footage was crucial in helping police quickly determine that the shooter was no longer a threat to the public. Authorities have not established any connection between Lenius and the two victims, leading them to believe the attacks were random. His family described the incident as a senseless act of violence.
Subsequent reports from the Cloquet Police Department indicated that the motive for the killings remains unclear. A toxicology report confirmed the presence of methamphetamine in Lenius's system, and investigators believe he may have been experiencing a mental health episode compounded by drug use. A search of Lenius's electronic devices found no evidence of any prior communication or knowledge of the victims. Before the shooting, he had reportedly sent a message to a coworker about dealing with "monsters." The investigation concluded that Patrick Roers was an innocent victim who was tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time.
