MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal grand jury indicted a Minnesota man Tuesday on charges that he fatally shot a prominent Minnesota state representative and her husband and seriously wounded a state senator and his wife while he was allegedly disguised as
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal grand jury indicted a Minnesota man Tuesday on charges that he fatally shot a prominent Minnesota state representative and her husband and seriously wounded a state senator and his wife while he was allegedly disguised as a police officer.
The indictment handed up lists murder, stalking and firearms charges againstVance Boelter. The murder counts in the deaths offormer Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortmanand her husband, Mark, could carry thefederal death penalty.
The chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota has called the killings a political assassination.
Prosecutorsinitially chargedBoelter in a complaint with six counts, including murder, stalking and firearms offenses. But under federal court rules they needed a grand jury indictment to take the case to trial.
Prosecutors say Boelter, 57, was driving a fake squad car, wearing a realistic rubber mask that covered his head and wearing tactical gear around 2 a.m. on June 14 when he went to the home of Sen. John Hoffman, a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He allegedly shot the senator nine times, and Yvette Hoffman eight times, but they survived.
Prosecutors allege he then stopped at the homes of two other lawmakers. One, in Maple Grove, wasn’t home while a police officer may have scared him off from the second, in New Hope. Boelter then allegedly went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them. Their dogwas so gravely injuredthat he had to be euthanized.
Brooklyn Park police, who had been alerted to the shootings of the Hoffmans, arrived at the Hortman home around 3:30 a.m., moments before the gunman opened fire on the couple, the complaint said. Boelter allegedly fled and left behind his car, which contained notebooks listingdozens of Democratic officialsas potential targets withtheir home addresses,as well as five guns and a large quantity of ammunition.
Law enforcement officersfinally capturedBoelterabout 40 hours later,about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from his rural home in Green Isle, after what authorities called the largest search for a suspect in Minnesota history.
Sen. Hoffman isout of the hospitaland is now at a rehabilitation facility, his family announced last week, adding he has a long road to recovery. Yvette Hoffman was released a few days after the attack. Former President Joe Bidenvisited the senatorin the hospital when he was in town for theHortmans’ funeral.
Friends have described Boelter as an evangelical Christian withpolitically conservative viewswhohad been strugglingto find work. At a hearing July 3, Boelter said he was “looking forward to the facts about the 14th coming out.”
In an interviewpublished by the New York Poston Saturday, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to discuss why he allegedly killed the Hortmans and wounded the Hoffmans.
“You are fishing and I can’t talk about my case…I’ll say it didn’t involve either the Trump stuff or pro life,” Boelter wrote in a message to the newspaper via the jail’s messaging system.
It ultimately will be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi, in consultation with the local U.S. attorney’s office, to decide whether to seek the federal death penalty. Minnesota abolished its state death penalty in 1911. But the Trump administration says it intends to be aggressive in seeking capital punishment for eligible federal crimes.
Boelter also faces state murder and attempted murder charges in Hennepin County, but the federal case will go first.
Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris joined mourners at the Hortmans’ funeral June 28. Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate on the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, eulogized Melissa Hortman as “themost consequential speakerin Minnesota history.”
Hortmanled the Housefrom 2019 until January and was a driving force as Democrats passed anambitious listof liberal priorities in 2023. She yielded the speakership to a Republican in apower-sharing dealafter the November elections left the House tied, and she took the title speaker emerita.
Steve Karnowski, The Associated Press