Police are investigating the circumstances of a 14-year-old shot in St. Paul, whose family says he was shot in the head and will not survive.

Officers responded to a 911 call about 9:30 p.m. Friday, during which a caller reported a juvenile shot himself in a Dayton’s Bluff residence, said Sgt. Toy Vixayvong, a St. Paul police spokesman.

Police gave the boy first aid in the 300 block of Bates Avenue and called for St. Paul Fire Department medics. Medics took the boy to the hospital and he’s been on life support.

Jerron Chapman’s mother “made the decision to give the gift of life to save other people” and he is scheduled to become an organ donor on Tuesday, said family friend Arial Rodriguez, speaking from the hospital on Monday night with Chapman’s mother, Kitrinna Simonson, by her side.

Chapman is a freshman at Johnson Senior High School. He is “an amazing, smart, athletic, kind” young man, Rodriguez said. “He was the apple of his mama’s eye.”

He was at the home of a relative on his father’s side when the shooting happened Friday, according to Rodriguez.

Police are looking into how the shooting happened and where the gun came from. They’ve interviewed friends of the teen who were at the residence of the time of the shooting, Vixayvong said.

“We don’t know where they got the gun, who gave them this gun and ... now my friend is suffering because she lost her perfect boy,” Rodriguez said, adding that Simonson wants the person who provided the gun to be arrested and held accountable.

A GoFundMe for the family started by Jamie Addison, a cousin of Simonson’s, was originally a medical fundraiser “because we had hope for the best outcomes possible, but there were just a lot of unknowns with something so severe,” Addison said. When they learned Chapman had no brain activity, the fundraiser was updated to be for funeral costs.

— Mara H. Gottfried

A suspect in theft of ‘Oz’ slippers dies at 77

A federal judge dismissed the charges Monday against a Minnesota man accused of hiding a stolen pair of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” after prosecutors informed the court that he died on Sunday.

Jerry Hal Saliterman, 77, of Crystal, who had been in poor health with lung disease and other ailments, had been scheduled to change his plea to guilty in January but that hearing was postponed indefinitely after he was hospitalized.

Federal prosecutor Matthew Greenley notified the court in a one-page motion Monday that Saliterman died Sunday but did not say how or where. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz granted the request and dropped the charges.

According to court filings, Saliterman was hospitalized in early January “for inability to walk and sepsis,” an infection that can be life-threatening. He attended his arraignment three days later via video from what looked like a hospital room. In an update to the court late last month, defense attorney John Brink told the court that his client had been discharged to a hospice facility and that his prognosis was poor. An accompanying letter from his doctor listed severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Saliterman was in a wheelchair and on oxygen last March when he made his first court appearance. He was charged then with theft of a major artwork and witness tampering for his role in the slippers case.

The sequined red slippers were stolen in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids. Their whereabouts remained a mystery for nearly 13 years until the FBI recovered them in 2018. They fetched a record for movie memorabilia of $32.5 million in December. The slippers were one of several pairs Garland wore during the filming. Only three other pairs remain.

Terry Jon Martin, now 78, of Grand Rapids, used a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case to steal them. According to his attorney, an old associate with connections to the mob told him the shoes had to be adorned with real jewels to justify their $1 million insured value. But he got rid of the slippers when he learned they were fake, and they ended up with Saliterman. Martin pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced last January to time served because of his poor health.

— Associated Press