 |
| Divine intervention but wrong aim. |
You notice they are not calling this individual a terrorist.
They gonna say he had mental issues. He was a quiet guy. He was a family man who went to church, volunteered at events and even got close to the governor.
While the right has called this shooter a leftists, the reality is he held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the U.S. was in a “bad place” where most churches didn’t oppose abortion.
Minnesota authorities and the feds have found the shooter who assassinated two Democratic lawmakers on Saturday.
The authorities identified 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter as a suspect and captured him a day later in the evening in Green Isle, Minnesota. He was federally charged with murder, stalking, and firearms offenses. The state charged Boelter with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder, but Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced her intention to upgrade the charges to first-degree murder before a grand jury.
Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated in a shooting at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States, on June 14, 2025. Hortman, the leader of the state house Democratic caucus, was killed alongside her husband, Mark. Earlier that morning, State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot in their home in nearby Champlin, and were hospitalized. Police responding to the attack on the Hoffmans pro-actively checked on the Hortmans' home, where a man believed to be the attacker fired at them. The shooter escaped the scene, sparking the largest manhunt in Minnesota history.
According to federal prosecutors, Boelter arrived at the Hoffman residence shortly before 2 a.m. CDT (UTC−5) on June 14, 2025. He knocked on the door, shouting that he was a police officer. As the Hoffmans opened the door, he asked if they had weapons. John Hoffman shouted "You're not a cop" and attempted to push Boelter out the door; Boelter replied "this is a robbery" and shot both husband and wife repeatedly.
At 2:06 a.m., police in Champlin, Minnesota, responded to an emergency call from the Hoffmans' daughter; they found Hoffman and his wife Yvette injured by gunshot wounds. John Hoffman was shot nine times, while Yvette was shot eight times. According to their nephew, Yvette was shot while shielding her daughter from the shooter.
 |
| Republicans often call for violence against Democrats. |
The acting United States Attorney for Minnesota, Joseph H. Thompson, said that Boelter went to two other homes after leaving the Hoffman residence. Boelter first went to state representative Kristin Bahner's house in Maple Grove, where he knocked on the door. Bahner, on vacation with her family, was not at home and Boelter left. Next, he parked near the residence of state senator Ann Rest in New Hope.
At 2:36 a.m., while he was parked, a police officer had an encounter with Boelter; the officer, believing him to be a colleague who had been sent to check on the senator, attempted to talk to him, but he did not respond. The officer called for backup and went to Rest's house. Boelter then left New Hope and went to the Hortman residence in Brooklyn Park.
Two Brooklyn Park police officers, alerted by their colleagues in Champlin to the shooting, proactively went to check on the Hortmans. They arrived at the Hortman home at 3:35 a.m. and saw what appeared to be a police vehicle in the driveway; Mark Bruley, the Brooklyn Park police chief, said the vehicle "looked exactly like an SUV squad car".
As the officers arrived at the residence, they witnessed a person who was later described as wearing a hyper realistic rubber mask (an old man disguise), a full police uniform (including body armor), a badge, and standard police gear. The attacker drew a gun and shot at the officers, and they returned fire. The attacker retreated into the house and the officers witnessed the attacker shoot Mark Hortman through the open door of the house. The police moved Mark Hortman from the threshold of the home and he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. A drone was then used to enter the residence, where Melissa Hortman's body was found.
More officers were called to the scene, surrounding the house, and a SWAT team arrived. However the suspect escaped the police on foot after exchanging gunfire.
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Oh let's say he is a Democrat. Ignoring the fact gun violence is the biggest issue in the country. Democracy is coming second. Deadly diseases will be third.
Near the scene at Hortman’s home, authorities say they found an SUV made to look like those used by law enforcement. Inside they found fliers for a local anti-Trump “No Kings” rally scheduled for Saturday and a notebook with names of other lawmakers. The list also included the names of abortion rights advocates and health care officials, according to two law enforcement officials who could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
Both Hortman and Hoffman were defenders of abortion rights at the state legislature.
Suspect not believed to have made any public threats before attacks, official says
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a briefing on Sunday that Boelter is not believed to have made any public threats before the attacks. Evans asked the public not to speculate on a motivation for the attacks. “We often want easy answers for complex problems,” he told reporters. “Those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation.”
Friends told the AP that they knew Boelter was religious and conservative, but that he didn’t talk about politics often and didn’t seem extreme.
“He was right-leaning politically but never fanatical, from what I saw, just strong beliefs,” said Paul Schroeder, who has known Boelter for years.
A glimpse of suspect’s beliefs on abortion during a trip to Africa
Boelter, who worked as a security contractor, gave a glimpse of his beliefs on abortion during a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023. While there, Boelter served as an evangelical pastor, telling people he had first found Jesus as a teenager.
“The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong in many churches,” he said, according to an online recording of one sermon from February 2023. Still, in three lengthy sermons reviewed by the AP, he only mentioned abortion once, focusing more on his love of God and what he saw as the moral decay in his native country.
He appears to have hidden his more strident beliefs from his friends back home.
“He never talked to me about abortion,” Schroeder said. “It seemed to be just that he was a conservative Republican who naturally followed Trump.”
The church Boelter attended outside Minneapolis issued a statement Sunday condemning the shootings as “the opposite of what Jesus taught his followers to do.”
“This incident has devastated our church family and does not reflect our values or beliefs,” the Jordan Family Church said on its website, adding it was cooperating with law enforcement.
Seeking to reinvent himself
A married father with five children, Boelter and his wife own a sprawling 3,800-square-foot house on a large rural lot about an hour from downtown Minneapolis that the couple bought in 2023 for more than a half-million dollars.
He worked for decades in managerial roles for food and beverage manufacturers before seeking to reinvent himself in middle age, according to resumes and a video he posted online.
After getting an undergraduate degree in international relations in his 20s, Boelter went back to school and earned a master’s degree and then a doctorate in leadership studies in 2016 from Cardinal Stritch University, a private Catholic college in Wisconsin that has since shut down. While living in Wisconsin, records show Boelter and his wife Jenny founded a nonprofit corporation called Revoformation Ministries, listing themselves as the president and secretary.
After moving to Minnesota about a decade ago, Boelter volunteered for a position on a state workforce development board, first appointed by then-Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, in 2016, and later by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. He served through 2023.
In that position, he may have crossed paths with one of his alleged victims. Hoffman served on the same board, though authorities said it was not immediately clear how much the two men may have interacted.
Launching a security firm
Records show Boelter and his wife started a security firm in 2018. A website for Praetorian Guard Security Services lists Boelter’s wife as the president and CEO while he is listed as the director of security patrols. The company’s homepage says it provides armed security for property and events and features a photo of an SUV painted in a two-tone black and silver pattern similar to a police vehicle, with a light bar across the roof and “Praetorian” painted across the doors. Another photo shows a man in black tactical gear with a military-style helmet and a ballistic vest with the company’s name across the front.
In an online resume, Boelter also billed himself as a security contractor who worked oversees in the Middle East and Africa. On his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he told Chris Fuller, a friend, that he had founded several companies focused on farming and fishing on the Congo River, as well as in transportation and tractor sales.
“It has been a very fun and rewarding experience and I only wished I had done something like this 10 years ago,” he wrote in a message shared with the AP.
But once he returned home in 2023, there were signs that Boelter was struggling financially. That August, he began working for a transport service for a funeral home, mostly picking up bodies of those who had died in assisted living facilities — a job he described as he needed to do to pay bills. Tim Koch, the owner of Metro First Call, said Boelter “voluntarily left” that position about four months ago.
“This is devastating news for all involved,” Koch said, declining to elaborate on the reasons for Boelter’s departure, citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation.
Boelter had also started spending some nights away from his family, renting a room in a modest house in northern Minneapolis shared by friends. Heavily armed police executed a search warrant on the home Saturday.
‘I’m going to be gone for awhile’
In the hours before Saturday’s shootings, Boelter texted two roommates to tell them he loved them and that “I’m going to be gone for a while,” according to Schroeder, who was forwarded the text and read it to the AP.
“May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn’t gone this way,” Boelter wrote. “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for the trouble this has caused.”
No comments:
Post a Comment