Murder of Brian Glick

Brian Glick was born April 25, 1972, in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in Minneapolis before his family moved to Bloomington. He graduated from Bloomington Kennedy High School in 1990 and began working at a Subway store on Old Shakopee Road East in 1992, near the home he shared with his mother, stepfather, and teenage sister. Glick was saving money to marry his fiancée, Katie Long, and had shifted career plans from aircraft mechanics to becoming a paramedic after discovering he was color-blind. In the year before his death, Glick was diagnosed with a large benign brain tumor and underwent surgery to remove it in May 1992. At the time of his death he was still recovering but had a positive prognosis and had returned to work at Subway.

On the night of Monday, October 25, 1993, Glick was working alone at the Subway. He spoke by phone with his fiancée around 11 p.m. and went out back to empty the trash about fifteen minutes later. Waiting behind the store were Dennis Tate, 16, and Michael William Olson, 19, a former Subway employee who had been fired but still knew Glick and the store's layout. As Glick returned inside after taking out the trash, Tate and Olson attacked him, choking and beating him until he was unrecognizable. They then entered the store, damaged surveillance cameras, and stole a cashbox containing $152.

Glick's fiancée arrived at the store around 11:30 p.m. to pick him up and, finding it empty, called police, who arrived shortly before midnight. Glick was found behind the store and taken by ambulance to Hennepin County Medical Center. He died at 4:50 a.m. on October 26, 1993, with his parents present. Doctors found that a piece of his skull, still healing from the earlier brain surgery, had been pushed into his brain during the attack, contributing to his death.

Olson was arrested on October 27 after police found a bloody shirt at his home; Tate was apprehended the next day. Both confessed, telling police they intended to use the stolen money to buy and resell drugs, a plan that failed when a drug dealer robbed them.

Both defendants pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Hennepin County District Court. Olson was sentenced in March 1994 to 27 years and two months in prison by Judge Kevin Burke. Tate's case took over a year to resolve because his defense argued he was under sixteen at the time of the offense; his birth certificate disproved this, and the Minnesota Supreme Court denied his appeal, allowing him to be tried as an adult. Tate pleaded guilty and was sentenced in January 1995 to 25½ years in prison by Judge John M. Stanoch. Glick's parents and fiancée gave victim impact statements at the proceedings. While incarcerated, Tate changed his name to Mujahid Ghazi Muhammad and was released under supervised work-release custody in Ramsey County in 2010. Olson was released under supervised work-release custody in Hennepin County in 2011.