Community Members React To Cloquet Murders at Super 8

January 9, 2024

Pat Brink,

CLOQUET, Minn. — In Cloquet, the Super 8 is much quieter in the parking lot today. And while we attempted to talk with the other businesses in this area, they didn’t want to talk to us. But we did talk to residents in the area as well as a business owner a little further away who gave us their reaction to the events.

One woman was at the grocery store near the hotel this morning. She knew what happened at the hotel, but said she just needed to get her groceries and that she wasn’t even sure if ALDI would be open. She recounted her reactions from Monday night:

“I heard there was a shooting and my best friend was like right down there. So I called her or messaged her I don’t remember, it was pretty traumatic but to just make sure she was safe and wasn’t going shopping you know around the area”.

B&B Market is located about one block up from the scene. The owner Jake Richardson told us he wasn’t so worried about the situation until it was time to have his employees leave for the night.

“When you have to worry about the high school kids and make sure they get home. I don’t know it wears on you and get worried. I told them to go home and they went out to look at the stuff and that I’d said go home and then told them kind of what I knew and then yeah they went home,” said Richardson

Other residents were not willing to appear on camera, but one did talk about his experience and his concerns that his daughter was visiting friends near the scene.

“The concern was very, well it was very concerning at first, and things like that don’t happen around here very often, especially to the level that it did happen,” said Nathan Skiff. “There was great concern, other family members I talked to, and my daughter’s friends’ families were calling me and also trying to find out if our kids were together. That kind of thing turns out they were not in the area at the time, thankfully.”

One woman summed up what many people were thinking. “Everything’s back to normal. But you know, it’s not, but yeah.”