dickinson police – Dustin Monke

BISMARCK — The final defendant in the former Trinity High School principal’s federal lawsuit against the city of Dickinson and three law enforcement officials denied allegations made against him on Monday.

Stark County Sheriff Terry Oestreich denied Thomas Sander’s allegations in a U.S. District Court complaint that he was subjected to intimidating interrogation while Oestreich was a detective with the Dickinson Police Department investigating the March 3, 2014, fire that destroyed parts of the school.

Sander claimed in a complaint, filed June 8, that he was “seized, confined, and subjected to unreasonable force, including coercive, threatening, and intimidating interrogation, by law enforcement officials,” including Oestreich, Detective Sgt. Kylan Klauzer and Detective Jeremy Moser, “until he falsely confessed to starting the fi re.”

Sander is suing the city of Dickinson, the three law enforcement officials and up to 10 unnamed “Doe” defendants for emotional and financial damages that allegedly occurred during his incarceration after he claimed that Klauzer and Oestreich coerced him into admitting that he started the Trinity fire during an interrogation March 4 and 5, 2014.
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The mother of a man whose body was found in a Dickinson construction site three years after he disappeared from there says she has received little information about the investigation into his death just days before a memorial service will be held for him.

Nearly three months have passed since the body of Eric Haider was found at a worksite off 40th Street West in north Dickinson by private investigators who had been hired by Mary Ellen Suchan, Haider’s mother.

Haider’s remains were exhumed May 22 “relatively intact,” according to a Dickinson Police Department report and a positive identification was made a week later. He had disappeared from the job site where he was working for Cofell’s Plumbing and Heating on May 24, 2012. Police investigators and private citizens spent months looking for Haider, who was 30 years old and living in the Bismarck area at the time of his death, near the site following his disappearance, but turned up no results.

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