Minnesota law enforcement authorities arrested the man wanted in connection with the early Saturday morning attack that killed a state lawmaker and wounded another.
Vance Boelter, 57, was captured Sunday night after what Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley called “the largest manhunt in state history”.
Bruley said at a Sunday night news conference that police were searching the area of Boelter’s property near the city of Green Isle when one of them thought they saw him “running into the woods.” After about an hour and a half, with the help of several SWAT teams and a State Patrol helicopter, authorities approached him and managed to “call him to us”.
“Where he was finally taken into custody was in a field,” Bruley said, adding that Boelter was armed at the time.
Boelter was the target of a multi-day manhunt involving hundreds of local, state and federal officers following the shocking deaths of Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. Authorities say the couple was shot and killed in their Brooklyn Park, Minn., home by a man posing as a police officer.
In the same early morning hours, Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot in their nearby home in Champlin, Minn. In a statement shared with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Sunday night, Yvette said John “is undergoing several surgeries now and is getting closer every hour to being out of the worst.”
“He took 9 shots,” she wrote. “I took 8 and we are both incredibly lucky to be alive.”
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans told reporters on Sunday that Boelter has been charged in the murders of the Hortmans, as well as the shooting of the Hoffmans. He said the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are reviewing whether to bring additional federal charges.
Boelter was taken to Hennepin County Jail shortly after 1 a.m. Monday and is due in court later in the afternoon, according to MPR News.
What Happened on Saturday
Police say they initially responded to the shooting at the Hoffman home and then went to the Hortman home. There, they saw a car with emergency lights in front and a man at the door dressed in blue with a black bulletproof vest. Authorities say that man fired at police but managed to flee.
Authorities have not announced a possible motive for the attacks, but Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the shootings “a targeted act of political violence.”
At a Saturday news conference, state police said they found a list of individuals inside what they say was Boelter’s vehicle. Hortman and Hoffman were on that list along with other lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who are also Democrats.
Evans said on Sunday that if police hadn’t found Boelter at the Hortman home, forcing him to abandon his vehicle, “I have full confidence that this would have continued throughout the day.”
Authorities also said they found “No Kings” flyers in the car, a reference to the anti-Trump protests that took place across the country on Saturday. Minnesota state authorities had asked residents to avoid the gatherings, though many still attended and the protests remained largely peaceful.
Other protests in the U.S. also remained largely peaceful, though not without incidents: Police in Virginia arrested a man for recklessly driving his car through a crowd gathered to protest, striking one person. In Texas, another man was arrested for making threats against state lawmakers there.
And on Sunday, Salt Lake City police announced the death of an “innocent bystander” who had been shot at a downtown protest, allegedly by an event peace team member who was aiming at a different target: a person brandishing a rifle at protesters.
In a social media post, Trump condemned the Minnesota shootings, saying that “such horrible violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”
Source: www.npr.org By Meg Anderson, Rachel Treisman