Shakopee Couple Charged with Assaulting Limousine Driver

A Shakopee couple has been charged with assaulting a limousine driver in Minneapolis in November after the driver told one of the suspects that he couldn’t smoke in the limo.

Elizabeth Tasinnasapewin Brewer, 23, and Chevis James Miller, 25, who live at the same address in Shakopee, are charged with felony third-degree assault resulting in substantial bodily harm, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, filed by Minneapolis Police Officer Jane Moore, a man came to the police department’s Fifth Precinct station on Nov. 19 to report that he had been assaulted at about 2:30 a.m. outside the Downtown Cabaret Club in Minneapolis.

The man, a limousine driver, said he was flagged down outside the club by a security guard, who asked him to take four people home. Miller got into the front passenger seat, and two men and Brewer got into the back of the limo, according to the complaint.

As soon as Miller sat down, he began swearing and grabbed the driver’s lighter, according to Moore’s account. The driver took the lighter and told Miller that he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the car, at which point Miller yelled, “Go [expletive] yourself, or I’m going to kick your [expletive],” according to the complaint.

The other three passengers became “verbally abusive” toward the driver, who stopped the car, told them to get out and got out himself. While he was standing outside the limo, one of the four punched him in the head from behind, and then all four jumped on him and “repeatedly punched him,” and Brewer scratched his face and eyes, the complaint charges.

Security guards from the Downtown Cabaret Club intervened and pulled the four off the driver, according to the complaint. The four were put into a taxi, and the driver took himself to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with an orbital bone fracture in his eye and cuts and abrasions on his face, the complaint says.

A security guard at the Downtown Cabaret Club told police that the four patrons were drunk inside the club, began “causing trouble” and had to be escorted out. He said he went back inside the club, and when he came back out a few minutes later he saw the four assaulting the driver.

The security guard told police that he heard Brewer say, “I cracked him one,” according to the complaint.

Brewer and Miller are free on separate $60,000 bonds. Omnibus hearings in both cases are scheduled Feb. 8 in Hennepin County District Court.