Law Office Shooting Suspect Indicted For 1st Degree Murder

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A grand jury Wednesday indicted a man suspected of shooting and killing a law clerk in St. Paul's Cathedral Hill neighborhood last month.

Ryan Petersen, 37, is charged with one count of premeditated first degree murder, one count of intentional second-degree murder and one count of illegal possession of a firearm.

Petersen is accused of fatally shooting 23-year-old Chase Passauer, a law clerk at a firm in St. Paul. Court documents say Petersen was a client of the law firm and expressed his dissatisfaction with their services in several text messages and phone calls on April 7. Later that day, Passauer was found dead at his desk at the law firm's office above the popular restaurant W.A. Frost & Company in St. Paul.

Court documents say there were seven shell casings found at the scene, and that Petersen told several close friends and family that he was "going away for a long time," for "doing something bad." Investigators searched his Woodbury home later that evening and found a firearm. They later matched that firearm to the shell casings found at the scene of the murder.

Police later arrested Petersen in Woodbury that evening.

If convicted, he could face a life sentence.