Minnesota police arrested the man wanted for the attack on Saturday morning (14), which killed a state lawmaker and left another injured.
Vance Boelter, 57, was arrested Sunday night (15) after what Brooklyn Park police chief Mark Bruley called “the largest manhunt in state history”.
Bruley said at a press conference Sunday night (15) that officers were searching the area around 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 surrounded and captured him.
“The location where he was finally apprehended was in a field,” Bruley said, adding that Boelter was armed at the time.
Boelter was the target of a weekend-long manhunt involving hundreds of local, state, and federal officers following the shocking deaths of Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband. Authorities say the couple was shot to death in their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, by a man posing as a police officer.
That same morning, Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot in their home in Champlin, Minnesota. In a statement shared with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar on Sunday night, Yvette said John “is undergoing many surgeries right now and is getting closer every hour to being out of danger.”
“He took 9 bullets,” she wrote. “I took 8 and we both are very lucky to be alive.”
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans told reporters on Sunday that Boelter had been charged with the murders of the Hortmans, as well as the shooting of the Hoffmans. He said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office are reviewing whether to bring additional federal charges.
Boelter was booked into Hennepin County Jail shortly after 1 a.m. on Monday (16) and is scheduled to appear in court late 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 all in blue with a black bulletproof vest.
Authorities say the man shot at police but managed to escape. Authorities have not announced a possible motive for the attacks, but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called the shootings “an act of targeted political violence.”
At a press conference on Saturday, state police said they found a list of individuals inside what they say is Boelter’s vehicle. Hortman and Hoffman were on that list, along with other legislators, including Senator Tina Smith and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats.
Evans said on Sunday that if officers 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 pamphlets with the words “No Kings” in the car, a reference to the anti-Trump protests that took place across the country on Saturday. Minnesota state authorities 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: Virginia police 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 legislators.
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 against the protesters.
In a social media post, Trump condemned the Minnesota shootings, saying that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”
Source: www.npr.org By Meg Anderson, Rachel Treisman