Apple Valley Man Involved in 2010 Assault Arrested for Violating Probation

Police have arrested an Apple Valley man who was convicted of assault last year in connection with an incident in Rosemount in which a man was beaten unconscious and run over with a car.

Phillip Deshoin Wood, 25, was arrested just before 4 a.m. Wednesday in Apple Valley on a suspected probation violation. He is being held in the Dakota County Jail without bail pending a probation violation hearing Nov. 16.   

Wood pleaded guilty in August 2010 to second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, four other felony charges—third-degree assault resulting in substantial bodily harm, aiding an offender, aiding an offender to avoid arrest and another charge of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon—were dropped.

Wood was involved in a May 7, 2010, incident in which he and two other men, Theto Diee Hatley Jr. and Aaron Santos, got into an altercation with the victim, Rory Swanstrom, at Shenanigans in Rosemount.

After the argument at the bar, Swanstrom left with two friends. The three men were walking home when two cars stopped beside them; three men got out of the cars and began fighting with them.

Witnesses told police that the suspects attacked Swanstrom, kicking him in the head as he lay unconscious on the ground. When one of Swanstrom’s friends jumped on top of him to protect him, he was also kicked in the face and head.

As Swanstrom lay unconscious against the curb, two of the suspects got into a car, which then headed toward Swanstrom and ran over him before driving onto the grass and leaving the scene. The other suspect got into the second car and followed the first one.

stopped the first car shortly after the assault and identified the driver as Hatley and the passenger as Wood.

Both men were taken to the Rosemount police station. One of Swanstrom’s friends identified Wood as the man who kicked him in the face and head while he was trying to protect Swanstrom.

While Wood was waiting to be interviewed, he took off his shirt and threw it in the cell toilet, attempting to wash away blood and other evidence.

Although Wood initially denied being involved in the assault, he agreed to the August 2010 plea agreement and was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. A judge stayed all but a year of that sentence with the provision that Wood didn’t violate terms of his probation.

Hatley entered a similar plea agreement with prosecutors and received the same sentence as Wood. However, he appealed his sentence to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which this week reversed the district court’s sentence and remanded the case to Dakota County.