‘This Is the Stuff of Nightmares’: Prosecutors Detail Hour-by-Hour Plot by Minnesota Shooter To Kill Elected Officials

Prosecutors are describing an assassin’s plot to kill dozens of Minnesota officials as “the stuff of nightmares.” Speaking to reporters on Monday, law enforcement officials said the suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, who was apprehended in southern Minnesota on Sunday night, traveled to more lawmakers’ homes than previously disclosed while wearing his police uniform and a silicon mask. The acting United States attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, briefed reporters about the nature of Mr. Boelter’s alleged crimes and his attempt to flee. Mr. Thompson said the attacks began in the early morning hours on Saturday, with the shooting of a state senator, Joe Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. The Hoffmans are still hospitalized, though Mrs. Hoffman told Senator Klobuchar that her husband is “closer every hour to being out of the woods,” according to a text from Mrs. Hoffman that the senator shared on X. After shooting the Hoffmans, prosecutors say Mr. Boelter traveled to the home of a second state lawmaker, though they did not identify who that lawmaker was. “Video surveillance showed that Boelter rang the doorbell at the state representative’s house at approximately 2:24 a.m.,” prosecutors say. “Fortunately, the state representative was not home. She and her family were gone on vacation, and so Boelter left.”Again, Mr. Boelter went to another lawmaker’s home — this one belonging to a state senator at New Hope, Minnesota. He was still wearing his law enforcement disguise and the silicon mask seen in other surveillance footage. Luckily, by the time Mr. Boelter reached the state senator’s home, the news of the shooting of the Hoffmans had broken among law enforcement agencies. New Hope police were preemptively dispatched to that state senator’s house to do a wellness check, where they encountered Mr. Boelter. “The New Hope police officer believed that Boelter was a police officer that had been dispatched to the scene to check on the status of the state senator,” Mr. Thompson told reporters. When the actual police officer tried to speak with Mr. Boelter, he refused to respond. The officer then called in backup and made her way to the state senator’s home to check on the lawmaker, though by the time her fellow officers arrived, Mr. Boelter had left. After that encounter with the police, Mr. Boelter traveled to Melissa Hortman’s home, where he killed both the former Minnesota house speaker and her husband. Their rescue dog was also shot by Mr. Boelter, leading the Hortmans’ children to put the dog down after their parents had been murdered. A fellow state representative, Erin Koegel, said on X that the dog was not going to survive. “It’s truly chilling,” Mr. Thompson told reporters. “It’s no exaggeration to say this is the stuff of nightmares.”Mr. Boelter had a hit list of dozens of officials from Minnesota, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Senator Smith. That list was first reported by CNN. “This was a targeted attack against individuals that answered the call to public service,” the head of the FBI field office at Minneapolis, Special Agent Alvin Winston, said.Mr. Boelter now faces six criminal charges related to his alleged crimes, along with shooting, stalking, and murder. The punishment for each charge ranges between 20 years and life in prison. The federal murder charges could result in Mr. Boelter receiving the death penalty. “These were targeted political assassinations the likes of which have never been seen in Minnesota. It was an attack on our state and on our democracy. We will not rest until he is brought to justice,” Mr. Thompson said in a statement Sunday night accompanying the charges.

‘This Is the Stuff of Nightmares’: Prosecutors Detail Hour-by-Hour Plot by Minnesota Shooter To Kill Elected Officials

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