A 14-year-old girl succumbed to her injuries this week after she was randomly strangled and stabbed 25 times by a recently released criminal in Fargo, North Dakota.
Jupiter Paulsen was skateboarding at a strip mall when she was allegedly set upon by 23-year-old Arthur Kollie, a homeless meth user who was recently granted probation after he assaulted a member of law enforcement in 2017. Police reportedly have obtained surveillance footage that shows Kollie’s attack on Paulsen, according to local media. He has since been charged with murder.
Paulsen survived the initial attack and was discovered by a sanitation worker who began CPR. Authorities arrived on scene just before 7 a.m. on June 4, finding her “bloody” and “unconscious,” according to the Fargo Police Department.
The girl was transported to Sanford Medical Center in Fargo. There, she reached a stable condition “from the neck down,” her father said via GoFundMe, but was apparently unable to overcome damage inflicted upon her brain as a result of oxygen deprivation.
“We just got word from the doctor today that our baby girl is too far gone and there isn’t anything they can do,” the girl’s father disclosed in an update to the crowdfunding page posted Tuesday evening. All that was left was to “gather family and to say our goodbyes,” he reported before she was taken off life support.
“This is a very dark moment in our lives,” he said.
An organ donation flag was raised outside the hospital in Paulsen’s honor as her remains will now be used to save the lives of others.
“It means the world to me that part of her is going to be out in the world saving lives and to be able to share that with somebody, to be able to help somebody, she would have loved that, she would have wanted that. So her wishes are also my wishes,” her mother said, per local media.
Meanwhile, her apparent murderer is in police custody with a bail set at $1 million.
Although this story has been reported by some local media, it has received marginal traction on the national level, save one article published by People. This lack of coverage has driven some to question why this tragic story has received so little attention while other, more trivial stories are given the spotlight.
A Fargo 14 year-old was stabbed over 20 times, beat & strangled by a complete stranger when she was out skateboarding.
Her attacker was on probation for a conviction for assault… just why is there so little coverage of this story?
Say her name #JupiterPaulsen pic.twitter.com/7LS52wWuDm
— Rebecca Brannon (@RebsBrannon) June 9, 2021
For example, NBC News recently ran a 2,500-word piece profiling a black woman who volunteers at a Mississippi abortion clinic. CNN reported yesterday on a dog that was rescued after getting lost in the Arctic but was uninterested in the Paulsen story.
Kyle Hooten
Kyle Hooten is Managing Editor of Alpha News. His coverage of Minneapolis has been featured on television shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and in print media outlets like the Wall Street Journal.
