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Left: Cole Kolstad (Rice County Jail). Right: Brian Stoeckel (Boldt Funeral Home).
High on drugs, a Minnesota man believed someone told him that either he or his roommate “needed to die by midnight.”
Cody Kolstad took a loaded shotgun from an unsecured gun cabinet and approached his sleeping roommate, shooting him in the neck and fatally wounding him. On Friday, the 35-year-old Kolstad admitted guilt to second-degree murder for the death of 41-year-old Brian Daniel Stoeckel in 2022.
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Following the shooting at their residence in the 100 block of 2nd St SE in Morristown—a small town about 60 miles south of Minneapolis—Kolstad contacted 911 at approximately 12:40 a.m. on May 31, 2022.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Kolstad instructed dispatchers to “just come look” and also requested they “bring the coroner” with urgency. When officers from the Rice County Sheriff’s Office arrived, they discovered Kolstad lying facedown on the grass.
“I shot him in the head, dude,” he told one deputy. “It’s in the head. I’m going to jail/prison.”
Deputies walked inside the home and found Stoeckel dead from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Post-Miranda, Kolstad asked deputies to “put one in my head and burn me in that building. I fell asleep that’s the cover story. It’s all f—ing lies.” When asked why he should die, he told them “because I took a life.” He also said he took “lots of drugs,” according to the affidavit.
The defendant went on to tell deputies that “another person had told him either he or Brian needed to die by midnight.” That’s when he grabbed the shotgun and fired two shots at Stoeckel, one of which hit the victim in the neck while the other struck the wall.
Prosecutors charged Kolstad with first-degree murder. As part of his plea to second-degree murder, Kolstad faces 25 years in prison when he’s sentenced on May 2.
According Stoeckel’s obituary, his death left a “huge hole” in the hearts of his family and friends “who were always entertained by his stories and interesting sense of humor.”
“No matter the circumstance, you’d always leave with a story of something funny or crazy Brian did or said when you were with him,” the obituary said.
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