Man Charged With Pistol-Whipping Ex-GF in SLP, Threatening a ‘Murder Suicide’

A Fridley man is accused of pistol-whipping his ex-girlfriend, placing his Beretta in her open mouth and firing a round into her car as she drove him to his mother’s home in St. Louis Park.

Joshua Justin Stewart, 29, is charged with one count of second-degree felony assault and one felony count of violating a domestic abuse no-contact order.

According to the criminal complaint:

The evening of Dec. 20, Stewart’s ex-girlfriend took a break at the tattoo shop where she works to smoke a cigarette in her car.

Stewart then got in the car and blamed him for her son being taken by child protection, she told police.

When she asked him what it would take for him to leave her alone, he told her to drive him to his mother’s house in S. Louis Park.

While she was driving, he grabbed the hair on the back of her head and struck her in the face with a gun, she told police. Police noted bruises on her face.

Police found a lower receiver for a Beretta PX4 pistol in Stewart’s Fridley apartment, along with a box of .45 caliber ammunition, a spent shotgun case, air pistols and drug paraphernalia.

In the car, when she began to yell, Stewart placed the barrel of the gun into her open mouth and left it there until she removed it, she said.

When the arrived at Stewart’s mother’s house, she demanded he leave the car.

“Why don’t we just do a murder suicide?” she said he asked her before getting out of the car, gun in hand.

Before she drove away, he fired a round into her car’s hood.

Stewart told police that his ex-girlfriend came to visit him on Dec. 20 and that they went to a Perkins together. He denied assaulting her, threatening her and owning or firing a gun.

Stewart was charged with possession of an illegal short-barrel shotgun in 2004 and with driving while intoxicated in 2013.