Minneapolis, MN
Minneapolis hit and run survivor shares message of resilience
A hit-and-run survivor in Bloomington is back on his feet more than two years after he was almost paralyzed.
On a frigid December day in 2022, Luke Zimmer saw a woman stuck in a snowbank along I-35W South near Johnson Street northeast in Minneapolis. He stopped to help tow her out.
“Just as I thought, ‘Okay there’s a good spot, I’ve moved enough snow I can get a strap around part of the wheel,’ and I had reached back to grab the tow strap, then everything went black,” said Zimmer. “I didn’t hear anything.”
State Patrol identified the vehicle that hit him as a Toyota Sienna van. The driver took off from the scene.
“The next thing I know, I’m lying upside down in a snowbank,” said Zimmer, who described not being able to feel his legs. “I couldn’t get up, and I couldn’t make sense of the situation. I literally had to lie there in the snow until someone could help, and that was the first time I ever remember feeling that helpless.”
The woman he stopped to help flagged down others who were driving by, including an off-duty paramedic who told him to lie still.
A GoFundMe page that was created for the family after the crash described bystanders covering Zimmer with a sleeping bag, putting hand warmers around him and talking to him as they waited for an ambulance in sub-zero wind chills.
Someone also placed a bright hat on his head.
“I wear it almost every winter just as a reminder of the kindness of strangers,” said Zimmer.
He underwent an eight-hour surgery to repair a shattered vertebra. Extensive physical therapy followed and by the time he left the hospital three weeks later, he could walk again.
“We are just so thankful for how far we have come because we didn’t know,” said Michelle Zimmer, his wife. “I was preparing myself for him to be permanently paralyzed.”
Walking around their backyard, the Zimmers showed us their flock of chickens and ducks. They’ve started a business called Bloomington Farm and Feed, which delivers Minnesota-sourced products to customers’ doorsteps.
“It helps lower the carbon footprint, it helps improve the quality of eggs people are providing for their families and also having that local Minnesota farmer support,” said Zimmer.
The idea developed during Zimmer’s recovery, when they couldn’t travel the distance to pick up the high-quality feed they typically used. Michelle Zimmer explained that part of the GoFundMe donations helped them get the business started.
Meanwhile, State Patrol told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS there’s no update in the case, which means the driver who hit Zimmer is still out there.
“I actually don’t blame him, I don’t,” said Zimmer. “It was an accident, and I feel bad that he was in such a place in his life that he couldn’t stay because it’s going to be with him for the rest of his life, not knowing what happened.”
Zimmer said if the driver proactively game to him and apologized, he would forgive them.
A halt on the construction of data centers in Minneapolis took effect in July after the Minneapolis City Council discussed the need for more time to understand the facilities’ potential environmental impacts.
The Council approved the halt through November by an 8-5 vote in May. Members said the halt allows time to study the environmental impacts of data centers and plan their development more conscientiously.
However, Council members not in favor of the halt said it will result in reduced tax revenue and may drive away businesses willing to invest in downtown Minneapolis.
Data centers are not new to the Minneapolis area, but community concerns have grown in recent months, President of Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council Dan McConnell said.
“Data centers have been around for decades,” McConnell said. “They’re not new. There just seems to all of a sudden be this hysteria around data centers.”
Celeste Robinson, policy aide to Minneapolis Council member Robin Wonsley, said the city should not rush the process because of the potential environmental trade-offs compared with the promised economic benefits. She said the halt could be extended to allow a full 12 months of analysis.
Robinson said the Council’s halt on data centers allows for a more thorough evaluation of their impacts.
“I think that there’s a misconception that the City Council being deliberative and taking the time to do it right. I think that there’s been a portrayal that that’s somehow a bad thing,” Robinson said.
Robinson said, although data centers are often seen as an investment, there is no evidence the developments generate the economic benefits for communities that supporters claim they do. She said the Council wants to determine what resources they would potentially take from the city.
“It is corporations who see land, fresh clean water, and electric grids that they can use for their profit, and that those profits get moved out of state to shareholders,” Robinson said. “They are not reinvested in our community, and so a lot of the rhetoric around data centers has really been about unverified claims around them being a source of investment.”
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ website claims that data centers are a staple for the modern job market and help to create more jobs, but labor protections for workers and regulations to protect surrounding communities are needed.
Resolution 7, a plan created by the AFL and CIO, outlines labor protections for data center employees and regulations aimed to protect surrounding communities. The plan calls for legislation that would require data centers to conserve water and energy. It seeks transparency from data center operators, union labor agreements and policies requiring data center operators to pay their share of energy and water costs.
In recent years, a lack of development in Minneapolis has seen a decline in commercial property value, leaving a shortfall of about $50 million in expected commercial property tax to fall onto the shoulders of residents, according to the Minneapolis Times. To help offset that shortfall and alleviate the burden that was placed on residents, Minneapolis must find new sources of revenue, Council member Elizabeth Shaffer said.
Some believe data centers, often being large-scale commercial developments, can relieve these financial pressures. Shaffer said the data center located in the Sleep Number headquarters in downtown Minneapolis has had a positive financial impact on the city.
“The Sleep Number building increased its valuation to eight times what it was a year ago because of a data center,” Shaffer said. “That helps relieve the property tax burden that residents and apartment owners have been feeling.”
When property values increase, property tax revenue also increases, helping Minneapolis generate revenue and address its estimated $50 million deficit, Shaffer said.
Robinson said data centers are not the only way for Minneapolis to generate revenue within the city.
“Council member Wonsley has been looking at how do we tax the rich, how do we put fees on real estate transfers for extremely high-value real estate,” Robinson said. “There are so many things that the city council can be doing to bring in new revenue to shift the property tax burden off of working-class people, that is not related to letting big tech corporations build data centers.”
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