Woman pleads guilty to shooting building while searching for daughter

Published 6:50 pm Saturday, July 14, 2012

A LeRoy woman charged for shooting at a building she thought her daughter was in changed her plea to guilty Friday in Mower County Court.

Marina Cathlina Young, 35, pleaded guilty to drive-by shooting with a dangerous weapon, a felony. Young was also in court on Friday for fleeing an officer on foot on March 28.

Police dispatched to LeRoy for a runaway child on March 16, according to the court complaint. Young told officers she had not seen her daughter since 4 p.m. the previous day and that she could be hiding in a vacant building.

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Officers later spoke with a man working on top of a grain bin who said he saw a woman fire three to four shots at a nearby building that morning, according to the court complaint. The man watched the woman, later identified as Young, shoot the lock on the building door.

According to the witness, Young said, “If you’re in there, you’re dead.” The witness also watched Young return the gun to her car and then enter the building with two of her other children.

The officer spoke with Young at her home — near the building — and according to the complaint, Young said she believed her daughter was “dead or frozen” inside the building, so she fired shots at the door using a .22 caliber rifle and used a sledgehammer to break inside.

The child was later found unharmed and returned to school that day.

Young has yet to be sentenced.