Emergency Call Audio Released After Attack on Minnesota Lawmakers
The audio of a 911 call made following a violent attack on two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota has been released.
On June 14, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, 55, and State Senator John Hoffman, 60, were attacked in separate incidents at their homes. Emergency dispatch recordings capture the immediate response as authorities arrived at the scenes.
The assault claimed the lives of Rep. Hortman and her husband, Mark. Senator Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, survived but remain hospitalized with serious injuries.
According to Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, authorities received the first emergency report around 2:00 a.m. from Hoffman’s residence.
They then ‘proactively’ visited Hortman’s home where they were met with the suspect – named by police as Vance Luther Boelter, 57 – ‘immediately’ firing at them.
Evans claimed: “The individual was able to escape during that exchange of gunfire.”
Boelter is alleged to have text his roommate that he ‘may be dead shortly’. Law enforcement said they found a manifesto that named several other people on his alleged hit list as it was revealed that those on the list were abortion rights activists.
State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark died from their injuries (Minnesota House of Representatives photographer’s office/Minnesota State Senate)
Audio recordings from the night in question were obtained by TMZ, where dispatchers can be heard describing the injuries sustained by the lawmakers in their homes.
According to the audio, Hoffman was shot once in the elbow and once in the abdomen, where he had ‘bleeding going on in his stomach’ that was ‘very distended.’
There was also said to be a female victim in the home with Hoffman who had been shot three times, once in her arm and twice in her abdomen.
Hortman and her husband had also sustained gunshot wounds, with a second audio recording detailing the account of medical dispatchers revealing that one victim was going into cardiac arrest while the other had died at the scene before emergency services arrived.
Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette are still in hospital (Minnesota House of Representatives photographer’s office/Minnesota State Senate)
They claimed that the suspect may have holed up inside of the home of his victims.
That same day, a press conference was held in which authorities stated that they had exchanged gunfire with the alleged suspect at Hortman’s home, but he managed to escape on foot.
Police shared that the suspect had imitated a police officer and was currently at large and that he had been wearing ‘a light-colored cowboy hat with a dark-colored long-sleeve collared shirt or coat, light pants and carrying a dark bag’ during the last time he was seen.
As he could be ‘armed and dangerous’, police issued a manhunt for him in Brooklyn Park.
Hortman was the top House Democratic leader in the state legislature and a former house speaker. She was first elected in 2004.
Meanwhile, Hoffman, a Democrat, was first elected in 2012. He runs Hoffman Strategic Advisors, a consulting firm.
He previously served as vice-chairman of the Anoka Hennepin School Board, which manages the largest school district in Minnesota.
Both Hoffman and Hortman represented districts located north of Minneapolis.
