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The search for Vance Boelter, charged with assassinating DFL Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and shooting DFL Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, was the largest manhunt in Minnesota history.
At a Sunday-night news conference, political and police leaders rightly credited the women and men behind this manhunt, joining everyday Minnesotans lauding law enforcement for their efforts at keeping the public — as well as several other targeted political leaders — safe after the initial attacks.
And, in fact, the carnage could have been much worse: Boelter went to four, not two, targeted homes, and according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley, the quick thinking of Brooklyn Park Police Sgt. Rielly Nordan interrupted the assassin’s spree.
Bruley detailed how after Nordan’s shift his instincts kicked in upon hearing about the attack on the Hoffmans in their Champlin home. Knowing that the Hortmans lived nearby and that the speaker emerita would be worried about her colleague and his family, Nordan dispatched two officers to check on the Hortman home.
There they confronted Boelter, who was impersonating a police officer, driving what looked like an official squad car. Gunfire, perhaps from Boelter toward the officers, was returned, but Boelter was able to get in the house and escape out the back door. Meanwhile, the officers tended to Mark Hortman, yet unaware that Melissa was slain.
From then on the manhunt was on, with federal, state, county and local law enforcement entities cohesively coordinating their efforts that ended 43 hours after Boelter allegedly invaded the Hoffman’s house with the arrest of the man suspected of crimes that acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson rightly described as “the stuff of nightmares.”