The sentence closes the criminal case from a 2024 attack near Brainerd that left one neighbor dead and sent a pregnant woman and four children fleeing in fear.
BRAINERD, Minn. — A Brainerd man was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for killing a neighbor, kidnapping his pregnant girlfriend and forcing her four children into a van during a violent overnight attack near Brainerd in November 2024.
Chad Aanerud was sentenced in Crow Wing County after pleading guilty in December to first-degree murder, kidnapping, two counts of second-degree assault and first-degree burglary. The sentence brings a formal end to one of the region’s most alarming recent criminal cases, one that began with a shooting call before 2 a.m., grew into a house fire and Amber Alert, and left several victims and one dead neighbor at the center of a broad criminal investigation.
Investigators said the violence began late on Oct. 31, 2024, and carried into the early hours of Nov. 1 at neighboring homes in Oak Lawn Township, east of Brainerd. Deputies were called at about 1:50 a.m. to Loerch Road, where they found 62-year-old Lyle Maske dead in a driveway from an apparent gunshot wound. Authorities later said the shooting happened after Maske went to check on trouble next door. According to charging records, Aanerud’s girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, had told her four children to run to the Maskes’ home after she said Aanerud sexually assaulted her. The children arrived frightened and told people there that Aanerud was “robbing” them. Maske decided to go over to see what was happening. Court records say he chose not to take his rifle because he believed bringing it could make the situation worse.
What happened next turned a neighbor’s decision to help into a homicide case. A woman who was staying at the Maske home drove him down the driveway and dropped him off, then returned to remain with Maske’s wife and the children. About 10 minutes later, investigators said, Aanerud came to the door carrying a rifle, demanded that the women return “his kids,” threatened to kill them and fired inside the house. He then forced the children outside and into a white van, where his girlfriend was already in the front seat. When the other woman went looking for Maske, she found him on the ground and covered in blood and called 911. Deputies who responded also saw flames at the nearby home where Aanerud’s girlfriend and the children had been staying. Authorities said that by the time law enforcement pieced the scenes together, the case involved a fatal shooting, alleged domestic violence, the abduction of five people and a house fire.
The search moved quickly. A statewide Amber Alert was issued for the four children, who ranged in age from 3 to 14, and authorities said Aanerud was found after a traffic stop in Morrison County at about 7:15 a.m. that same morning. The woman and children were recovered alive, and officials said the children were unharmed. The woman, however, had visible injuries to her face, neck and chest, according to court records summarized in later reporting. Investigators also said Aanerud smelled strongly of gasoline or another flammable substance when he was arrested. In court filings, the woman told police she had seen him dumping buckets of gasoline or diesel on the home after taking firearms from it. She also described seeing the confrontation with Maske end in gunfire. Prosecutors said Aanerud then threatened to kill her if she did not get into the van. Those allegations shaped what became a long list of felony counts before the case was later resolved with a plea agreement.
That plea changed the legal path but not the weight of the allegations. Aanerud admitted guilt to first-degree murder, kidnapping, two assault counts and burglary. In exchange, prosecutors dropped more than a dozen other charges, including additional murder counts, several kidnapping charges, a criminal sexual conduct charge and an arson charge. The first-degree murder conviction carried the most serious consequence and set the framework for the life sentence imposed this year. Local reports said the sentence also included credit for the time Aanerud had already spent in custody since his arrest in 2024. Court and media accounts differ on his exact age in some reports, but the central facts of the plea and sentence were consistent across coverage: prosecutors secured a first-degree murder conviction tied to Maske’s death, and the remaining counts reflected the terror inflicted on the woman and children during the same chain of events.
The case drew unusual attention in central Minnesota because of how many crimes investigators said unfolded in a matter of hours and because of the role Maske played. He was not a random bystander at a distant location. He was a nearby resident who went to check on an emergency after children came running for help. Family members later described his death as a shock. The setting also added to the public impact: this was not a crowded urban block or a long-running fugitive case, but a rural area near Brainerd where deputies were trying to sort out overlapping scenes before dawn. By sunrise, authorities were dealing with a homicide investigation, an Amber Alert and the aftermath of a burned home. The details gave the case a broad footprint well beyond Crow Wing County and helped explain why sentencing drew renewed attention in February 2026, more than a year after the attack.
Even with the conviction now entered and the sentence imposed, some parts of the case remain outside the public record in full detail. The dismissed charges mean there was no trial testing every allegation one by one before a jury, and the plea agreement narrowed what had to be proved in open court. What is clear from the procedural record is the sequence that prosecutors built: an alleged sexual assault and threats inside the home, children running next door for help, Maske going over to intervene, Maske being shot, the home catching fire, and the woman and children being taken away in a van before law enforcement stopped it hours later. The official next step in the criminal case is limited because sentencing has already occurred. Unless there is a post-conviction challenge or appeal, the trial-court phase is effectively over, and the life sentence with parole eligibility after 30 years becomes the controlling outcome.
For the victims and the community, the sentence closes the court case more neatly than it closes the story. Maske’s family lost a 62-year-old man who, by all public accounts, stepped toward danger because children had shown up asking for help. The woman at the center of the abduction survived with her children, but the record describes a night of violence, threats and fear that stretched across multiple scenes and several hours. Authorities have not framed the end of the case as a mystery solved by one dramatic break so much as a fast-moving investigation that relied on emergency calls, witness statements, the Amber Alert system and a same-morning traffic stop. That combination brought the missing victims back alive. It did not save Maske, whose death is the reason the case ended with a life sentence rather than a shorter prison term on kidnapping and assault counts alone.
The case stands now as closed at the sentencing stage, with Aanerud ordered to serve life in prison and not eligible for parole until 30 years have passed. The next formal milestone would come only through any future appellate or post-conviction filings, or eventually through the parole process decades from now.