A massive two-day manhunt ended on Sunday with the arrest of Vance Boelter, 57, for allegedly killing a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and her husband while posing as a police officer, Governor Tim Walz said.
Boelter allegedly shot dead Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, in their home on Saturday - a crime Governor Tim Walz characterized as a "politically motivated assassination."
Authorities said Boelter also allegedly shot and wounded another Democratic lawmaker, state Senator John Hoffman, and his wife Yvette at their home a few miles away.
"After a two-day manhunt, two sleepless nights, law enforcement have apprehended Vance Boelter," Walz told a news conference. "One man's unthinkable actions have altered the state of Minnesota.
"A moment in this country where we watch violence erupt, this cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences. Now is the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country, and each and every one of us can do it."
Walz said Hoffman, who had been hit with nine bullets, came out of his final surgery and was moving towards recovery.
Officials earlier said the gunman had left behind a different vehicle outside Hortman's house in suburban Minneapolis that resembled a police SUV, including flashing lights, and contained a target list of other politicians and institutions.
Boelter has links to evangelical ministries and claimed to be a security expert with experience in the Gaza Strip and Africa, according to online postings and public records reviewed by Reuters.
Boelter was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder, a Hennepin County criminal complaint showed.
Three of those charges are punishable with jail terms of up to 40 years, according to the complaint unsealed on Sunday.
Boelter fled on foot early on Saturday when officers confronted him at Hortman's Brooklyn Park home, said authorities who had warned residents to stay indoors for their own safety and unleashed the state's biggest manhunt.
When police searched Boelter's SUV after the shootings they discovered three AK-47 assault rifles, a 9-mm handgun, and a list of other public officials including their addresses, the criminal complaint showed.
Working on a tip that Boelter was near his home in the city of Green Isle, more than 20 SWAT teams combed the area, aided by surveillance aircraft, officials said. Boelter was armed but surrendered with no shots fired.
"The suspect crawled to law enforcement teams and was placed under arrest," Lieutenant Colonel Jeremy Geiger of the Minnesota State Patrol told the briefing. "The suspect was taken into custody without any use of force."
The operation to capture Boelter, drawing on the work of hundreds of detectives and a wide range of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, was the largest manhunt in state history, Brooklyn Park police Chief Mark Bruley said.
"Now begins the hard work of looking at what the motive is," Bruley said.
The killing was the latest episode of high-profile U.S. political violence.
Such incidents range from a 2022 attack on former Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband at their home, to an assassination bid on Donald Trump last year, and an arson attack at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's house in April.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
42 Comments
HopeSpringsEternal
Great police work!
JJE
Good to see he is in custody.
Who appointed him to what positions and why?
We need to see his manifesto to ascertain the extent of his affiliation with the No Kings movement.
Apparently not just a flyer but writings on the subject.
Blacklabel
Great job in capturing him alive, now we can hear from him directly and not his sketchy “roommate”.
BB
Those pretending this guy was part of the No Kings protests are being pathetically dishonest. Everything about the guy, starting with what a loser he is, points to MAGAville. Why else would he only target Dems and Planned Parenthood people?
Peppermint
Why, oh why, would that be an important question at this time?
JJE
The public deserves a full and honest account of what is going on here.
We know he is a Tim Walz appointee.
Ascertaining the truth is hard at the moment as they are quite circumspect.
Blacklabel
“Whoops. Look like Tim Walz deleted his tweet saying this was politically motivated, because the shooter was appointed by Tim Walz.”
Posted- along with a picture of the appointment certificate signed by T Tim (not a previous governor as falsely claimed)
ThePunisher
Good that they caught this insane Trump-supporting killer.
HopeSpringsEternal
Gov. Tim Waltz definitely taking another 'hit', guilt by association etc. Time for him to take out a fishing pole and stop destroying the Democratic Party.
D's considering 2028 Pres. Campaign quite pleased!
Jimizo
Lol. Full and honest!
Best wait for the conclusions of the investigation.
The spammers are going berserk - they already have their parents telling them to do their homework.
Wasabi
He is not an immigrant, not a drag queen. He is another white MAGA maniac.
Will trump pardon him too?
nishikat
He shot Dems. That makes him a Trump person. Timothy McVay was also a Trump person because a Democrat was in the WH. I bet if he buys some TrumpCoin Trump will pardon him. There is talk that Trump will pardon Diddy.
Bob Fosse
“Boelter has links to evangelical ministries”
Domestic terrorism. What’s noem going to do about it?
JJE
Starting to come into focus
Just recently, Melissa Hortman courageously voted in the state legislature for a bill to ban illegal immigrants from having state funded healthcare - the only democrat to do so.
Afterwards she sounded terrified when she spoke to local media afterwards.
Also turns out the suspect's wife worked for Tim Walz in DC while he was a congressman.
There needs to be a full investigation here.
This story is getting weirder and weirder.
Underworld
JJE
I think you may find, it likely to be confined to a good disguise.
I think you may find that he is an anti-abortion Christian nationalist who voted for Trump.
JJE
That is precisely why we need full disclosure to ascertain the facts here.
Jimizo
Best wait for the results of the investigation.
Hysterically biased posting isn’t useful to anyone.
Remember ‘oh wait!’.
bass4funk
Great news!
Bob Fosse
Are you sure you understand the concept of how news reporting works?
HopeSpringsEternal
Safe bet we won't be hearing from Gov. Waltz this week, as he's gone undercover, waiting for this media firestorm to blow over regarding his assassin 'appointee'.
Good luck Gov. Waltz, as you'll get hammered by d's in Pres. Debates, starting in 2027 = can run but can't hide
HopeSpringsEternal
Minnesota, just like neighboring Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc., all moving rapidly away from chaos and mayhem of far- left protestors and politicians, that's only fueling political violence across the country, including ongoing attacks on ICE, assassinations and attempts etc.
Americans want law and order, not anarchy
Bob Fosse
Boelter is an American. He wants to shoot people he disagrees with. He’s angry, white and has a legally owned firearm. He’s the rule, not the exception.
lincolnman
Another far-right wing crazy - steeped in the MAGA-cult of hate and violence, and incited by the lies and propaganda of Fox News...
How many more of these MAGA nut-jobs are out there?
Desert Tortoise
He was going to target them.
Underworld
HopeSpringsEternal
No big deal.
The previous Republican governor also appointed him. Why isn't anybody making a fuss about that?
Ah_so
It is weird that despite the dusting existence that he was a MAGA fanatic, some are still clinging onto the hope that he is a Democrat.
You can see above that a couple of the voices have gone quiet about this now, but others are still pushing what they must know by now it's a lie.
Cephus
"Boelter has links to evangelical ministries and claimed to be a security expert with experience in the Gaza Strip and Africa, according to online postings and public records reviewed by Reuters."
Well now we know he has link with evangelical ministries, and what gym does he attend and does he goes for groceries in Walmart or Targets? Quick to point his faith, slow in real substance of his relationship with the Democratic party and Tampon Tim.
Jimizo
Best to look at all angles. We all know how high you hold the virtue of honesty.
The religious angle being one of them.
Religious fanatics can be very dangerous. A cause of a lot of violence and suffering.
lincolnman
Denial...
Deluded...
Distracted...
Dreaming...
Blacklabel
strange you don’t call out your teammates who are now doing the “Hysterically biased posting” that “isn’t useful to anyone.”
Cephus
"Best to look at all angles. We all know how high you hold the virtue of honesty.
The religious angle being one of them.
Religious fanatics can be very dangerous. A cause of a lot of violence and suffering."
Very true, but it all depends on how you define religion because even LBTQ is a religion by itself right?
lincolnman
Once again, always helps to read the article before posting...
"The Minnesota Star Tribune, citing law enforcement officials, reported the target list included abortion providers and several dozen Minnesota Democrats, including Walz, who was also the Democratic vice presidential candidate last year, and Amy Klobuchar, a 2020 presidential candidate.
"There clearly was some through line with abortion, because of the groups that were on the list. So that was one of his motivations," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
He's clearly a far-right anti-abortion extremist, like some posters here who have posted numerous times that all abortions are "child murder"...
Tokyo Guy
Guy could openly confess that he did it for Trump, and our resident MAGA would say that he was coerced into it.
Underworld
Cephus
No.
Jimizo
I don’t have teammates. Stopped playing footy a few years ago. Ankle buggered.
Objectively speaking, I find the MAGA types far more transparently dishonest.
Ridiculous claims to wealth, academic prowess abd qualifications and a deluge of sock puppet accounts.
They take their lead from a leader completing divorced from truth.
Poor role model for these youngsters.
lincolnman
Absolutely true...
The suspect has a target list that includes only Dems and no Pubs...
Has a history of spouting far-right rhetoric on abortion and the sanctity of life...
He's no different from the far-right anti-abortion nuts that go around shooting doctors or blowing up abortion clinics...
But they can't process that, so it's back to the old MAGA-standby; "He's a Lib"...
MAGA-world - all denial, deflection and delusion, all the time...
Bob Fosse
No.
ClippetyClop
Just 5 months in and already MAGA are ripping the country apart.
Xi and Putin must be loving this incompetence.
I suppose ‘We voted for that too’.
bass4funk
And kills a Democrat for voting for declining healthcare for illegals
But carrying "No King" pamphlets in his bag,
Or the leftist who feels they can off anyone who disagrees or subscribe to their own twisted personal world point of view.
Which he is
The Dems are doing just that, as with everything.
Cephus
"The Minnesota Star Tribune, citing law enforcement officials, reported the target list included abortion providers and several dozen Minnesota Democrats, including Walz, who was also the Democratic vice presidential candidate last year, and Amy Klobuchar, a 2020 presidential candidate.
"There clearly was some through line with abortion, because of the groups that were on the list. So that was one of his motivations," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
He's clearly a far-right anti-abortion extremist, like some posters here who have posted numerous times that all abortions are "child murder"...
Bob Fosse
Friends have stated he voted for 47. He is on video giving anti LGBTQ sermons in Africa.
His wife and other family members were pulled over in a traffic stop yesterday with passports , guns and cash in the car.
TokyoLiving
Death penalty or rot in jail..
But wait for Trump's pardon..