Grand Portage man charged with attempted murder after wife stabbed on 911 call

A Grand Portage man is facing attempted murder charges after court documents say his wife was stabbed multiple times while she was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, a detail that underscores how quickly the violence escalated inside the home.

River Dufrane Spry, 41, of Grand Portage, also faces three felony assault charges. The alleged attack happened at a home on the 1600 block of Golf Course Road on April 24, when the woman was stabbed in the neck and later airlifted to a Duluth hospital.

The timing of the attack is one of the most disturbing details in the charging documents: the victim was already in contact with emergency dispatch when the stabbing began. Court records also say she believed she would have died if the knife had not broken during the assault, suggesting the attack may have ended only because the weapon failed.

A Cook County sheriff’s deputy, Paul Spry, was following up on a reported accident when he arrived at the home and saw River Dufrane Spry with his hand on the victim’s neck while she was lying on the floor with a knife wound. That account, if borne out in court, points to a violent encounter that was still unfolding when law enforcement reached the scene.

The case is drawing attention in Grand Portage, part of the Grand Portage Reservation, a federally recognized sovereign Ojibwe tribal government at the tip of Minnesota. The reservation’s population is about 618, while Cook County’s 2020 census population was 5,600, a scale that makes serious violent crime cases especially visible in a small community.

As the case moves through the courts, the Cook County Attorney’s Office is expected to play the central prosecutorial role. The next hearings will help determine release conditions and how the felony case advances, with the attempted murder charge signaling that prosecutors believe the alleged violence crossed the highest threshold of danger in a domestic assault.