2025 shootings of Minnesota legislators
On June 14, 2025, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated in a shooting at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States. Hortman, the leader of the state House Democratic caucus, was shot and killed alongside her husband, Mark. Earlier that morning, state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot and seriously injured in their home in nearby Champlin and hospitalized. Police responding to the attack on the Hoffmans checked on the Hortmans' home, where a man fired at them. The shooter escaped, sparking the most extensive manhunt in Minnesota history.
The authorities identified 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter as a suspect and captured him on the evening of June 15 in Green Isle, Minnesota. He was federally charged with murder, stalking, and firearms offenses. The state charged Boelter with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder. Boelter pleaded not guilty to all the federal charges on August 7. Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty announced her intention to upgrade the charges to first-degree murder before a grand jury.
The two victims were members of the Democratic Party-affiliated DFL. Federal charging documents described Boelter as acting with "the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate Minnesota legislators". Governor Tim Walz called the shooting "an act of targeted political violence". Inside Boelter's vehicle was a list of nearly 70 people, including abortion rights advocates, Democratic politicians, and abortion providers.
Events
According to federal prosecutors, Boelter arrived at the Hoffman residence in Champlin shortly before 2 a.m. CDT on June 14, 2025. He knocked on the door, shouting that he was a police officer. As the Hoffmans opened the door, he asked if they had weapons. John Hoffman shouted "You're not a cop" and attempted to push Boelter out the door; Boelter said "this is a robbery" and repeatedly shot both of them. At 2:06 a.m., police in Champlin responded to an emergency call from the Hoffmans' adult daughter, Hope; they found Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, with gunshot wounds. John Hoffman was shot nine times and Yvette eight times. According to Hope, her parents pushed her out of the way to protect her from the shooter, and while she sustained minor injuries when her body slammed into their washing machine, she was not struck by bullets.According to acting United States Attorney for Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, Boelter next went to state representative Kristin Bahner's house in Maple Grove, where he rang the doorbell. Bahner, on vacation with her family, was not at home and Boelter left. Soon thereafter, he parked near state senator Ann Rest's residence in New Hope. New Hope police had heard about the Hoffmans' shooting and dispatched an officer to perform a wellness check on Rest. The officer arrived at Rest's house at 2:36 a.m. and saw Boelter's black SUV parked down the street. Believing him to be a colleague also sent to protect Rest, the officer tried to talk to Boelter, but he did not respond. The officer continued to Rest's house. Boelter left New Hope and went to the Hortman residence in Brooklyn Park.
According to the federal indictment, Boelter arrived at the Hortman residence at about 3:30 a.m, still impersonating a police officer and wearing a silicone face mask and wig. He knocked on the door and told Mark Hortman, who answered, that he was performing a welfare check, shining a flashlight in Hortman's eyes. Two Brooklyn Park police officers, alerted by their colleagues in Champlin to the shooting, went to check on the Hortmans. They arrived at the Hortman home at 3:35 a.m. and saw what appeared to be a police vehicle in the driveway. Brooklyn Park chief of police Mark Bruley said the vehicle "looked exactly like an SUV squad car".
As the officers approached the Hortman residence, they witnessed a person wearing a realistic silicone mask, a full police uniform, a badge, and standard police gear. According to the federal indictment, the attacker drew his gun and shot at Mark Hortman and the officers, who returned fire. The attacker then "charged forward" into the house. Security camera footage indicated that the attacker proceeded to shoot Melissa Hortman as she attempted to flee upstairs. The police moved Mark from the threshold of the home and he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. A drone was used to enter the residence, where Melissa Hortman's body was found. More officers were called to the scene, surrounding the house, and a SWAT team arrived. The attacker escaped on foot after exchanging more gunfire with the police. Officers did not enter the house until 4:38 a.m., over an hour later, against the department's policy on confronting active shooters.
Victims
Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed. Melissa Hortman, who was first elected in 2005, served from 2017 to 2019 as the state house minority leader and from 2019 to 2025 as the 61st speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. The Hortmans' pet golden retriever Gilbert, allegedly shot by Boelter, was "gravely injured" during the attack and euthanized afterward. John and Yvette Hoffman survived and were out of surgery by 9:50 a.m. that day. First elected in 2012, John Hoffman served as minority whip from 2017 to 2020. Like Representative Hortman, he is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, the Democratic Party's Minnesota affiliate.On June 19, Hoffman and his wife released a joint statement about the assassination attempt. On July 15, their daughter Hope also released a statement, saying "my parents saved me". On June 27, Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their dog Gilbert all lay in state at the Minnesota State Capitol. Hortman is the first woman to receive this honor. Thousands paid their respects, with the service attended by a number of high-profile Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Governor Tim Walz.
Accused
Vance Luther Boelter is an American man accused by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as the shooter.Boelter was born in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, a rural town in Brown County northwest of Mankato. In 1996, he left Minnesota and resided in Arcadia, Wisconsin. On October 4, 1997, Boelter married his wife in Winona, Minnesota, and they moved several times during the 2000s. Boelter left Wisconsin in 2002 and resided in the small Eastern Oklahoma town of Muldrow. In 2005, he briefly left Oklahoma for Minnesota before buying a house in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Boelter owned the family's Muldrow home from 2002 to 2007 and the Sheboygan home from 2005 to 2013. In 2020, he purchased property in Pierson, Iowa, including a century-old church that had been converted to a home for $20,000. In 2024, he and his wife sold the property for $60,000.
Careers
In 1988, Boelter left Minnesota for a couple of years when he was enrolled as a student at Christ For The Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas.Upon graduating from the Christ For The Nations Institute in 1990, Boelter returned to Minnesota to live with his father in Richmond, Minnesota. Boelter enrolled as a student at St. Cloud State University and graduated in 1996 with a degree in international relations.
While living in Muldrow in 2002, Boelter served as a supervisor at a Gerber Products Company plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas. A senior pastor from Springdale called Boelter "always very kind, gentle, patient, and gracious with people". In late 2004, Boelter left Gerber for a job at Johnsonville Foods's Sheboygan headquarters. In April 2008, he left Johnsonville and returned to Sleepy Eye. He worked as a production coordinator at Del Monte Foods there until 2011.
Boelter later went back to school and earned a master's degree and then a doctorate in leadership from the now-closed Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. In July 2011, after leaving Del Monte, Boelter moved to Shakopee, Minnesota, where he served as general manager for Greencore until April 2016. That month, he became general manager of a southwestern Minneapolis 7-Eleven store until November 2021. Shortly before Boelter bought his Green Isle, Minnesota, farmhouse in October 2023, Boelter began mortuary science courses at Des Moines Area Community College. In August 2023, Vance received his last employments at two Minnesota funeral homes, one in Savage and one in Saint Paul, removing bodies from houses and nursing homes for organ donation, jobs he quit in February 2025.
On social media, Boelter claimed to have military training and a career in private security, but National Public Radio found "no history working in law enforcement, the military or private security". A friend of Boelter's said he made claims about his life that were "fantasy". His company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, was registered with the state to his home address and listed him as "the director of security patrols", but there is no record the company ever had any clients. The company said it had a fleet of "police type vehicles"—the same SUVs police use. Boelter had security ties to his own former company, Souljer Security, that was registered to a church he owned while living in Arcadia, Wisconsin, in the late 1990s. He previously worked as a gas station manager before starting a company called Red Lion Group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Archives from the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions show that his company was first established on November 15, 1999, and was dissolved on May 12, 2010. According to Forbes, he had financial problems since beginning the business in the DRC. While living in Sheboygan, Boelter and his wife founded an evangelical nonprofit, Revoformation Ministries, and he claimed to have "sought out militant Islamists" in the West Bank and Gaza during the Second Intifada "to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn't the answer".
Boelter preached more than once in a church in the DRC, speaking against abortion rights and transgender people. He appeared as a speaker at a 2022 seminar on trade and investment organized by Minnesota Africans United, a nonprofit for African immigrants in Minnesota. In 2016, he was appointed to the Governor's Workforce Development Board, a nonpartisan 60-member unpaid advisory board, by then-Governor of Minnesota Mark Dayton. Governor Tim Walz reappointed him to a four-year term in 2019. Matthew Taylor, a senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, said, "Boelter's views now appear to align with the political 'far right' of Christianity in the United States." Boelter's only prior legal troubles were minor traffic violations.