A woman is charged with pulling a knife on three children on a bike trail next to Centennial Park in Morristown and threatening to kill them, according to a criminal complaint.
Elizabeth Jane Kallestad, 45, faces three felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of making threats of violence. The complaint was filed September 2 in Rice County District Court.
According to the complaint, Rice County Sheriff’s Office deputies were dispatched at about 7:42 p.m. on August 31 to a weapons complaint. A parent told deputies that their children had been biking on the trail when a woman pulled a knife on them. Two of the parent’s children and a third child were there.
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One child told deputies the woman reached into her bag, pulled out a knife and told the child that if the child “snitched” again, they would see what happens, while holding the knife to the child’s chest. The child believed it happened because the child had identified the woman in a lineup in a separate incident, in which the child said the woman threw a bike into the water while the child was fishing about a week earlier.
A second child told deputies the encounter began as a verbal argument in which the woman called them “Jews” and “trailer trash,” then took a knife with a black handle and gray blade from a small black shoulder purse. The second child was farther away and could not recall what she said after that.
A third child, who knew the woman from two earlier encounters, said she made accusations the child knew were false, then “pulled a knife on us,” threatened to kill them in their sleep and followed them briefly as they left. The child described a switchblade with a black handle.
Deputies went to the woman’s home, where she admitted to an argument with children in the park but denied pulling a knife or having one, the complaint says. When deputies told her she was under arrest, she tried to go back inside and deputies blocked the doorway.
Deputies then obtained a search warrant. They found a small, dark shoulder purse on the floor of her bedroom with a black folding knife clipped inside the front pocket, according to the complaint.
