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Two-day manhunt for suspected Minnesota political assassin ends with surrender in farm field

Christopher Vondracek, The Minnesota Star Tribune on

Published in News & Features

Shooting suspect Vance Boelter’s two-day escape from authorities ended Sunday night in a field in Sibley County, where he surrendered amid drones and SWAT teams. It marked the end of an intense manhunt that had put Minnesotans across the state on edge.

A massive dragnet had encircled woods and farm fields throughout much of the day Sunday after authorities found a car and cowboy hat belonging to Boelter, who was wanted in the killings of state House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, as well as the attempted killings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Around 7 p.m., most of the search had concluded when a Sibley County resident reported that their trail camera captured an image that “was consistent with Boelter,” according to Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had SWAT officers and deputies deployed to the area.

“The trail cam picture alerted SWAT teams to go to that area, secure a perimeter, and with the help of drones, identify his location.”

Fletcher said that for about an hour Boelter attempted to evade arrest, but eight teams crawled in ditches to corral him and “he eventually surrendered peaceably after evading the SWAT teams.”

Fletcher, who declined to say whether Boelter was armed, said he was taken to the Sibley County Jail by the Brooklyn Park Police Department.

A criminal complaint against Boelter was quickly filed Sunday night alleging that Boelter was heavily armed and officers saw him shoot and kill Mark Hortman. Boelter was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.

According to the complaint: The first 911 call was made by one of the children of John and Yvette Hoffman after they were shot multiple times.

Champlin police responded to the Hoffman residence at 2:05 a.m. after receiving the 911 call. Surveillance footage from the home showed a dark Ford SUV with police-lights in the driveway. It showed Boelter approach the door in a mask, wearing a blue shirt, police vest and badge. He was holding a gun as he approached the door.

After he shot Johh and Yvette Hoffman, he fled in the SUV.

After Brooklyn Park police learned that the shooting victim in Champlain was a state legislator, officers were proactively sent to the Hortman residence. They arrived at 3:35 a.m. to find the Ford SUV in the driveway.

An officer watched as Boelter shot Mark Hortman through the front door. After an exchange of gunfire, Boelter retreated inside the house and escaped. Officers found Melissa and Mark Hortman dead inside the home.

When police searched Boelter’s vehicle, they found three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9mm handgun and a list of names and addresses of public officials. Further searches in the area located a ballsitic vest, a disassembled 9mm firearm, mask and gold police badge. Four of the firearms recovered by police were purchased by Boelter.

A person who was familiar with Boelter also spoke with investigators and positively identified him as the man on the surveillance footage from the Hoffman’s home in Champlain.

The middle-of-night attacks, under a police officer’s disguise at the lawmakers’ homes in suburban Minneapolis, was perpetrated by a killer who bore a hit list of pro-choice, Democratic politicians.

By Sunday afternoon, the vehicle believed to be driven by Boelter had been spotted east of his rural hometown of Green Isle in Sibley County. Asked by a reporter whether Boelter was getting around on dirt bike or bicycle, Evans said he could be using “multiple modes of transportation.”

But authorities remained frustrated after a day that opened with optimism for the shooting survivors. A nephew of the Hoffmans announced in the morning that the couple, in critical condition in a Twin Cities hospital, had woken up.

At their home in Champlin, bullet holes riddled the glass storm door, and nephew Mat Ollig said gunfire “barely missed his [uncle’s] heart.”

The 60-year-old lawmaker was shot nine times. His wife was shot eight times.

Images released by the FBI on Saturday showed Boelter wearing a facial disguise and dressed as a police officer while knocking on the door of a home.

The public also saw a closer view of the law enforcement response in the hours after the suspect slipped out of Hortman’s home, which sits along a golf course in Brooklyn Park.

First responders risked their own safety to carry Hortman’s husband from the home after exchanging gunfire with the assailant.

“I don’t have time explain it,” a medic radioed, according to 911 dispatch call obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune. “The shooter is still in the house. They believe barricaded with the firearm.”

Agents later returned with a SWAT team and sent a drone into the home, where they found Hortman‘s body.

On Sunday morning, it was revealed that law enforcement had detained Boelter’s wife a day earlier.

Just after 10 a.m. Saturday, the Mille Lacs County Sheriff‘s Office stopped a car carrying Jenny Boelter and three relatives at a Casey’s convenience store in Onamia, off Hwy. 169, roughly 110 miles north of Green Isle.

“Our law enforcement partners from the metro that are working this case became aware that she was traveling through my county,” Sheriff Kyle Burton said.

After talking with the four for hours, authorities took them toward Milaca, a Casey’s employee said.

 

Howie Padilla, a Department of Public Safety spokesman, said Jenny Boelter was no longer detained by Sunday morning.

“We met with his family,” the BCA’s Evans said, to understand more about what might be driving Boelter.

As the manhunt continued, however, key elements of the shooter’s motivation remained unknown.

Politicians and law enforcement confirmed Boelter had a target “list” of up to 70 largely Democratic and pro-choice politicians, as well as addresses for businesses and Planned Parenthood locations.

The document was not a clear manifesto, however, and was scratched out on a notebook, Evans said.

Some elected officials acknowledged that law enforcement had told them they were on the list, including U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Speaking on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” earlier in the day, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar reminded viewers that Boelter was a “murderous, murderous man.”

“What we’re most concerned about right now is that the next person is not a political person, but a person he just encounters,” she said.

Throughout the day on social media, speculation raged over the suspect’s motives and political beliefs.

Public records showed that Boelter had been appointed to a nonpartisan roughly 60-member workforce board, first by Gov. Mark Dayton and subsequently, by Gov. Tim Walz.

David Carlson, Boelter’s Minneapolis roommate and childhood best friend, described the suspect as a “strong supporter” of President Donald Trump.

Carlson said Boelter had become consumed with financial anxiety, particularly after over-leveraging himself in failed businesses.

“He’d been kind of down,” he said. “He was not as upbeat as he usually is.”

In addition to leading Praetorian Guard Security Minnesota, Boelter had said he was CEO of Red Lion Group. But, Carlson said, the firm was not a thriving business.

“He bought a couple of cars and maybe some uniforms,” Carlson said. “But it was never a real company.”

The nation’s political schism has been the backdrop for the emerging picture of Boelter as an evangelical, financially troubled Minnesotan now believed to have turned assassin.

The shootings targeting Democrats came on the day of the military parade called in Washington, D.C., by Trump and the nationwide “No Kings’’ protests held in response.

On Sunday morning, Trump told ABC News that Walz was a failed governor and a “grossly incompetent person.”

Walz, the state’s two-term DFL governor, said the president had not phoned him by Sunday afternoon.

Evans said state and federal attorneys stood poised to file homicide charges once Boelter was arrested. He encouraged the public to contact local law enforcement or a tipline (877-996-6222 or bca.tips@state.mn.us) with information.

Around the state, the mood felt halting and pensive, with people unsure how to return to normalcy.

In Detroit Lakes, a district judge cited Hortman’s murder in delaying Sen. Nicole Mitchell’s trial for breaking into her stepmother’s home a year ago. The proceeding was to start on Monday.

In St. Cloud, the CentraCare health system said in a statement that the AI assistant Grok, on the social media platform X, had falsely linked the shooting to a doctor with the same last name as the suspect.

In downtown Minneapolis, memorials poured in from cultural and sporting institutions.

For many close to Hortman and Hoffman, the pain was personal, not political. In Maple Grove, the PTO at Fernbrook Elementary School, where Yvette Hoffman is a support professional, had raised nearly $70,000 for the Hoffmans through a GoFund Me.

At Hortman’s desk in the House chambers of the Capitol, a bouquet of roses rested against a photograph of her.

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©2025 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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