Wrongful death suit follows Ruby’s Pantry shutdown in Lake County

The closure of Ruby’s Pantry has become more than a food-access story in Lake County and along the North Shore. A wrongful death lawsuit now follows the nonprofit after Richard Paul Johnson, 72, died in Cook when a stack of pallets fell from a forklift at a Ruby’s Pantry distribution site.

Johnson died on March 26, 2024, after what his obituary described as a tragic accident on March 14, 2024. One obituary identified him as Richard Paul Johnson, born Jan. 23, 1952, in Rush City, Minnesota. The Cook incident is now tied to a broader legal and civic reckoning over how a major rural food distributor operated and what protections were in place at its distribution events.

Ruby’s Pantry ended operations effective March 31, shutting down 85 sites across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and North Dakota, including locations in Silver Bay and Grand Marais. For North Shore communities that depended on the organization, the loss cut deeper than a single nonprofit’s collapse. Ruby’s Pantry had become one of the region’s most important low-cost food sources, with reporting describing a network of more than 80 mostly church-based sites serving more than 300,000 families each year.

The organization said in its shutdown messaging that the ministry was no longer financially sustainable. Other reporting said the group had been operating since 2003 under founder Lyn Sahr and had grown into a faith-based monthly food distribution ministry that collected surplus products from 150 food producers and delivered them to 87 rural communities. One account said it had distributed more than 21 million pounds of food and served more than 650,000 people each year.

Ruby’s Pantry also stood out because it did not require income verification. Visitors donated $25 and received a box of food and household necessities valued at up to $100, a model that helped fill gaps in smaller towns where grocery bills, fuel costs and limited retail options often strain household budgets.

Now the story has shifted from distribution to accountability. In Cook, the lawsuit places the fatal forklift accident at the center of questions about safety practices at volunteer-heavy food sites, while the shutdown leaves Silver Bay, Grand Marais, Cook and other rural communities facing the sudden disappearance of a network many families had come to rely on.