New Delhi: A brazen gunman masquerading as a police officer burst into the homes of two state legislators early on a June morning, wounding one pair of spouses and killing another in a scene that many officials now describe as the coldest imaginable political strike.
Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband died almost instantly in their Brooklyn Park kitchen around 1:30 a.m. that Wednesday. Hours later, State Senator John Hoffman and his wife endured a separate assault in Champlin, ten freeway miles to the north; both remain clinging to life in the same trauma unit. Investigators have named a once-reclusive 57-year-old former corrections officer, Vance Boelter, as the shooter, but he has not been located.
Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told reporters that inside a ransacked decoy patrol car found beside the first crime scene, the assailant left handwritten lists of elected officials alongside crude warrants for their arrest. Flyers taped to the dashboard bore a militant logo and the slogan ‘No Kings’, a language that echoes recent street protests directed at the Trump administration, yet no single grievance has fully explained the brazenness of the attack.
Minutes after the news broke, Governor Tim Walz paced the marble Capitol rotunda and labelled the day a shocking plunge into darkness for Minnesota folk who typically expect their politics to stay civil. The FBI, Metro SWAT teams, and county deputies are now conducting a door-to-door dragnet across the Twin Cities suburbs, and every legislator has been urged to change locks and upgrade home surveillance while the state weighs temporary perimeter fencing around its buildings.
Attorney general Keith Ellison of Minnesota characterised the rampage as an assault on democracy, pledging to thoroughly investigate every aspect. Some chatter on X floated a false-flag theory, yet investigators publicly reject any hint of staged political theatre.
National outrage erupted almost at once, jumbling fresh alarms about political violence with the familiar agony of another mass shooting. Back in Minnesota, communities mourn, detectives sift evidence, and ordinary residents stare at screens, desperate for a plausible answer.
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