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A memorial outside the Minnesota house chambers displays a photo of Melissa and Mark Hortman behind a table where people are dropping off flowers, notes, a hard hat, a plaid shirt. Signs in front of it read “in honor of our beloved Melissa”. On her desk, a photo and a bouquet of roses.
On Monday afternoon, the skies darkened, spilling sheets of rain across the Minneapolis suburbs Melissa Hortman represented.
The suspected gunman behind the killings of the Hortmans was captured on Saturday night, but the scars of the crimes will linger much longer. Residents here feel a sense of relief that Vance Boelter was taken into custody, but it comes alongside intense grief, a craving for justice and a sense of resolve.
Boelter was arrested and faces a host of charges over the killings of Melissa and Mark Hortman and the shootings of John and Yvette Hoffman in the suburbs of Minneapolis in the early hours of Saturday. Boelter allegedly dressed as a police officer and drove in a car that resembled a police squad, then fled the Hortmans’ home, leaving behind a list of names, mostly Democratic elected officials and abortion rights activists, menacing the people who he allegedly wanted dead.
The Hoffmans released a statement after the arrest, expressing “deep and profound gratitude” to police and the public for working to find and arrest the man. They said they were “incredibly lucky to be alive” and that “there is never a place for senseless political violence and loss of life”.
Brooklyn Park mayor Hollies Winston said Hortman built a “huge legacy” in his community, as did her husband, Mark. Her fingerprints are all over the city and the state, in the visible legislative accomplishments, but also the quiet ways she helped.
She worked with a youth mentor program in the area, bringing kids into her home to teach them about politics, he said. “She contributed greatly to that without really taking any credit for it,” Winston said.
“When you talk about amazing people, the community is really grieving that loss,” he said. “And I think now we’re kind of pivoting to, how do we honor that legacy, and how do we heal from what has occurred?”
Parts of Brooklyn Park were on a shelter-in-place warning on Saturday, contributing to the sense of unease, though Winston said he believes the community trusted law enforcement and understood the need for caution.
There was a “huge sense of relief” at the suspect’s capture, to at least put that piece of the process behind them, he said. People also want information about the investigation and to understand what happened, he said. “People very much want justice,” he said.
Many of those believed to be included on the gunman’s hit list expressed their thanks to law enforcement for finding the suspect. Elected officials quickly got law enforcement protection in the hours after the shooting – some said they learned about the shootings because law enforcement reached out to them about their inclusion on the list. Authorities say a motive isn’t clear, but allege he had been planning and monitoring lawmakers for months.
State representative Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley, who represented the same area as Holtman, told CNN that people are still in shock, though she called the arrest good news that provided a sense of relief. Still, she said, “we are definitely on our toes and still looking behind our backs”.
She said that the shooting was “yet another reminder” of the increasing safety threats against elected officials. “This is just a wake-up call,” Momanyi-Hiltsley said.
Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state, said law enforcement was “absolutely and immediately attentive”, providing police protection to him and many other elected officials. It’s believed the gunman acted alone, but there’s the lingering danger “in the back of everyone’s mind of whether or not there could be a copycat out there”, he told the Guardian.
Simon has known Hortman for three decades, since they went to law school together. He lost a friend, and he is still in shock. “The idea that we could still accomplish the things that she cared about in her name, we can still do great things in her name that she would be proud of, that is a potential source of strength,” he said.
Keith Ellison, the state attorney general, said in a statement that “all Minnesotans are relieved” that the suspect was in custody, but that he continued to grieve. “We will never be the same without them,” he said of the Hortmans.
It was, for many, a sign of the degraded state of American politics, now rife with acts of violence. Governor Tim Walz didn’t hesitate to call the shootings “politically motivated assassinations” – and the conditions that led to them aren’t resolved with one man’s arrest.
“As a country we cannot become numb to this violence,” Walz said. “We are a deeply divided nation. That has become even more clear over the last two days … As we heal, we will not let fear win. We must now move forward in Melissa’s honor with understanding, service and, above all, a sense of one another’s humanity.”
In an announcement of federal charges on Monday, acting United States attorney Joe Thompson said: “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.”
Like many other elections officials, Simon has been on the receiving end of threats for years. His office was evacuated last fall after receiving a package of suspicious white powder from something called the “Traitor Elimination Army”, he said. He feels he has enough security and protection, but that work needs to be done to address the uptick in political violence.
“We have to resist the temptation to engage in scorekeeping when it comes to violent, politically inspired acts,” he said. “I think it’s up to every sort of political community to police its own, to make sure that rhetoric and action don’t get out of hand and have the unintentional effect, much less the intentional effect, of inspiring violence.”
Angie Craig, a Democratic member of Congress from Minnesota, told the Star Tribune she had already increased security before the shootings, a sign of the times. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen a rise in political threats of violence for some time now,” she told the paper. “I don’t do public events anymore without private security or police presence in my own district.”
Some are still grappling with what could have happened to them. Ann Rest, a Democratic lawmaker who represents the city of New Hope, found out that the shooter had been outside her home on Saturday morning. The city’s police had come to proactively check on her and saw what they now believe was the suspect’s vehicle outside, thinking it was another member of law enforcement, authorities said Monday.
Rest credited the New Hope police for their “heroic work”. “Their quick action saved my life,” she said in a statement. “I am also thankful for the work of state and local law enforcement to apprehend the suspect before he could take any more lives.”
A lobbyist at the Minnesota statehouse said the capitol community was sending messages to each other to check in, to make sure people were safe but also to see how they were dealing with the horror.
“It is sort of cold comfort,” the lobbyist said of the arrest. “It can’t undo what’s happened. It’s such a rubicon to have been crossed.”
Because the suspect was on the run and allegedly knew about planned protests against the Trump administration, the governor and state patrol warned people not to attend mass protests in the state on Saturday – though many thousands of people did anyway, showing they would not shrink in the face of political violence.
Michelle Hensley, a Minneapolis activist, said friends sent her the message that people should stay home. She said: “My immediate reaction was literally, fuck that. It’s exactly the wrong response to this. This is what they want. And so it was so heartening to see so many other Minnesotans refused to cower.”
Diane Brady-Leighton served as a marshal for the No Kings rally at the state capitol. She felt that she couldn’t control for her own safety anyway, so she went ahead with her plans.
She felt “heartbroken and devastated and determined” to continue engaging in activist work to “get back to a functioning democracy”. She made a call to her husband, leaving an “if I die” message, because there was, after all, a killer on the loose. “I just feel like, my kids are adults. I have had a very full life. And this is mine to do in this moment.”
