Missouri Man Charged with Burglary and Assault in Eagan

A Missouri man has been charged with burglary after police say he broke into an Eagan woman’s home, hit her repeatedly and tried to steal her car before the woman’s daughter chased him away.

Prentiss Maurice Brown, 31, is charged with first-degree burglary and assault, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $35,000 fine. 

Brown has been in the Dakota County Jail on a $10,000 bond since his arrest June 11 on a warrant. An omnibus hearing in his case is scheduled July 10 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.

According to the criminal complaint, Eagan police were called to a home on Trailway Drive on March 26 on a domestic assault report.

When they arrived, officers found that the home’s exterior door frame had been broken, and the door’s trim was lying on the floor in the entryway.

Police spoke to the victim, who said she had been dating Brown for about a month. She told police that Brown was from Missouri, but she didn’t think he had a permanent address, and that he had stayed at her home the previous weekend.

The woman said she had told Brown she didn’t want him living with her, and she thought that made him angry. She gave Brown a ride earlier in the day to a class in Champlin, but when she dropped him off, she told him she wouldn’t be coming back to pick him up.

At about 1 p.m., the woman said, she was asleep in bed and awakened to find Brown standing over her, hitting her in the head. She said she screamed to her daughter to call 911, and that she tried to grab her cell phone from the nightstand, but Brown snatched it away from her.

The woman said Brown walked out of her bedroom, and she heard him grabbing her car keys. The woman’s daughter confronted Brown before he left and kept him from taking the keys, and the woman said she heard Brown telling her daughter not to call police.

A nationwide warrant for Brown was issued May 10, and he was arrested a month later in Hastings.