Fatal Assault Under Investigation at Food Processing Facility

Initially published 10:01 a.m. November 12th, 2025

Updated 10:36 a.m. November 12th, 2025

(KNSI) — The Wright County Sheriff’s Department is investigating a death at a food processing plant after a woman was allegedly attacked and beaten by a fellow employee.

According to the criminal complaint, police were called Tuesday morning around 6:00 to Advance Process Technologies in Cokato after a woman was found dead at her work station. First responders and police arrived and attempted life-saving measures, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. A fellow employee, 40-year-old David Bruce Delong, confessed to another employee that he assaulted the woman with a hammer, and “she is gone.”

Police reviewed surveillance footage, which shows Delong leaving his workstation and walking over to the woman, picking up a sledgehammer, and hitting her with it, knocking her to the ground. She is off camera, but investigators say the video shows he continued to hit her.

Court papers say he confessed to investigators he didn’t like the woman and had been planning to kill her “for some time.”

Delong is charged with one count of second degree murder with intent, not premeditated.

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