HOT PURSUIT

As administrator of the Concerned Citizens of Steele County (CCSC) Facebook page, Brad Kubat filters through many different issues impacting the greater community at large. Last week’s horrifying news of a woman being killed under a bridge overpass hit him particularly hard as it did the rest of the community.

On Saturday morning, Kubat came across a plea from the murder victim’s mother. In a statement posted on the Steele County Times website and Facebook, Stacia Schnoor made this passionate plea: “Clean that ugly place up and leave something beautiful for her. This was the last thing she saw. Remove the ugly there and make it beautiful.”

Kubat promptly shared the post from the Times on his CCSC Facebook.

“I cried my ass off when I read that and wanted to do something,” said Kubat, who is also a popular radio personality with KOWZ in Owatonna. “The biggest thing that inspired me was the call for help from the victim’s mother.”

Kubat connected on CCSC with Ivan Knopik, an electrician from Faribault. They had never met before but have chatted a few times on Facebook messenger. That was until Saturday, just hours after mom’s plea went out.

By 2 p.m. Kubat and Knopik met for the first time at the crime scene and dug in to clean up the mess that Stacia Schnoor was referring to in her statement.

Facing some rough terrain with steep inclines, Kubat and Knopik ignored their own aches and pains to get the job done on a hot sunny afternoon. It took them about four hours to clean up the mess.

“We cleaned the worst areas,” said Kubat. “We picked up mattresses, cushions, underwear, alcoholic containers, toddler clothes, syringes, needles and foils for Heroin use.”

The debris has been hauled to an area junk yard so it can be properly disposed.

It didn’t come easy for the pair.

“Ivan wore his sunglasses the entire time and he told me at the end he did so because he was crying,” Kubat said. “It was a very emotional time for us to be out there.”

“We kept going and neither one of us complained,” Kubat said. “We were both too proud to say ho wachy and sore we were. We decided this was more important than anything else. We can go home to our families, but this family (the Schnoors) will never have the luxury of their daughter ever coming home again.”

Added Knopik, “Ultimately, my folks (Ben and Marlys Knopik) raised me to be a doer.”

Despite initial media reports of the area being a homeless camp, Kubat is convinced it was something else. “In my opinion, it was a place where a bunch of junkies did their thing and got high,” he said. “It was a party place, but from here on out, the party’s over.”

Kubat lamented how it’s ironic that a place as busy as the Steele County Government Center didn’t deter people from congregating and how nobody noticed what was going on. “It’s tragic,” he says. “It’s too bad the community didn’t come together to clean this up earlier. Here it was right under everybody’s noses, and we had no idea.”

Kubat said he feels “so fulfilled” that he and a stranger he had never met were able “to beautify such an ugly and heinous place at the hands of a monster.”

Others followed suit on Sunday and came to paint the bridge overpass to remove nasty messages and graffiti.

“I was incredibly sore and incredibly proud of our community,” Kubat said.

Based on the traffic Kubat monitored on CCSC’s Facebook, he found this tragedy to grip the entire community.

And he’s thankful to have played a small part while going in hot pursuit of fulfilling a grieving mother’s wish.