Was Vance Boelter residing with his wife before Minnesota shooting? Jenny held with gun, ammo, cash and passports
The wife of a man accused of killing a Democratic congressman and her husband was taken into custody during a traffic check after police found a gun, ammo, cash, and passports in the trunk of her vehicle.
In Onamia, Minnesota, cops halted Jenny Boelter at around 10 a.m. on Saturday, according to local news KTSP. However, it was unclear if the stop was a regular stop or a premeditated raid by law enforcement as part of their efforts to find Vance Luther Boelter, 57, who is suspected of murder.
Jenny and three of her traveling relatives were held for two to three hours while the police examined the vehicle and interrogated them.
Although it was unclear if the pair was residing together at the time of the assaults, police on Saturday afternoon raided Boelter's confirmed home in Camden, Minnesota.
Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of dressing as a fictitious police officer and operating what appeared to be a police vehicle on Saturday, shooting and killing Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman, 55, and her husband, Mark, and injuring state Senator John Hoffman, 60, and his wife, Yvette. According to his best friend, Boelter was a 'strong' supporter of President Donald Trump.
The Hoffmans were assaulted at their home in Champlin, north of Minneapolis, while the Hortmans were attacked at their residence in Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb.
Boelter left behind a list of almost 70 targets, including Senator Tina Smith, Governor Tim Walz, and Representative Ilhan Omar. The list also included proponents of abortion, according to CNN and ABC News.
At a press conference, police stated that they are conducting a manhunt for Vance, who is assumed to be walking and has fled the area.
The FBI is in charge of the investigation and has offered a cash reward of up to $50,000 for information that results in Boelter's apprehension and conviction.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NDTV
19 minutes ago
- NDTV
US Police Arrest Vance Boelter For Shooting Minnesota Lawmakers
Minneapolis: 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. 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, the 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 had been impersonating a police officer while carrying out the shootings, wearing an officer's uniform and driving a Ford SUV with police-style lights, according to a Hennepin County criminal 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 US 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.
Hindustan Times
27 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Harvard to urge judge to bar Trump from closing doors for international students
A federal judge is set to consider on Monday whether to extend an order blocking President Donald Trump's plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University. US District Judge Allison Burroughs during a hearing in Boston will weigh whether to issue an injunction barring Trump's administration from implementing his latest bid to curtail Harvard's ability to host international students while the university's lawsuit challenging the restrictions plays out. Almost 6,800 international students attended Harvard in its most recent school year, making up about 27% of the student population of the prestigious school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. China and India are among the top countries of origin for these students. The judge scheduled the hearing after issuing a temporary restraining order on June 6 preventing the administration from implementing a proclamation that Trump had signed a day earlier. His administration has launched a multifront attack on the oldest and wealthiest US university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges. Harvard argues that the administration is retaliating against it in violation of the US Constitution's First Amendment protections against government abridgment of free speech for refusing to accede to its demands to control the school's governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students. It has filed two separate lawsuits before Burroughs seeking to unfreeze $2.5 billion in funding and to prevent Trump's administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on May 22 announced that her department was immediately revoking Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, the governmental mechanism that allows it to enroll foreign students. Her action was almost immediately blocked by Burroughs. While the homeland security department has since shifted to challenging Harvard's certification through a lengthier administrative process, Burroughs at a May 29 hearing said she planned to issue a "broad" injunction to maintain the status quo. A week later, though, Trump signed his proclamation, which cited national security concerns to contend that Harvard is "no longer a trustworthy steward of international student and exchange visitor programs." The proclamation suspended the entry of foreign nationals to study at Harvard or participate in exchange visitor programs for an initial period of six months and directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider whether to revoke visas of international students already enrolled at Harvard. Harvard has asked Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, to block Trump's directive. The university has said the administration unconstitutionally "sought to sever Harvard from its international students, with the inevitable and intended effect of wreaking havoc on the Harvard community, throwing into disarray every aspect of campus life." In court papers, the US Justice Department urged Burroughs not to lump Trump's proclamation in with the judge's consideration of Noem's actions, as it did not ban existing students and Trump relied on different legal authority for his order.
NDTV
30 minutes ago
- NDTV
Minnesota Shooting Suspect Was Deeply Religious And Conservative, Say Friends
The man accused of assassinating the top Democrat in the Minnesota House held deeply religious and politically conservative views, telling a congregation in Africa two years ago that the US was in a "bad place" where most churches didn't oppose abortion. Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was at the center of a massive multistate manhunt on Sunday, a day after authorities say he impersonated a police officer and gunned down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as "a politically motivated assassination." Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived. Friends and former colleagues interviewed by The Associated Press described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don't list party affiliation. Near the scene at Hortman's home, authorities say they found an SUV made to look like those used by law enforcement. Inside they found fliers for a local anti-Trump "No Kings" rally scheduled for Saturday and a notebook with names of other lawmakers. The list also included the names of abortion rights advocates and health care officials, according to two law enforcement officials who could not discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. Both Hortman and Hoffman were defenders of abortion rights at the state legislature. Suspect not believed to have made any public threats before attacks, official says Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a briefing on Sunday that Boelter is not believed to have made any public threats before the attacks. Evans asked the public not to speculate on a motivation for the attacks. "We often want easy answers for complex problems," he told reporters. "Those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation." Friends told the AP that they knew Boelter was religious and conservative, but that he didn't talk about politics often and didn't seem extreme. "He was right-leaning politically but never fanatical, from what I saw, just strong beliefs," said Paul Schroeder, who has known Boelter for years. A glimpse of suspect's beliefs on abortion during a trip to Africa Boelter, who worked as a security contractor, gave a glimpse of his beliefs on abortion during a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023. While there, Boelter served as an evangelical pastor, telling people he had first found Jesus as a teenager. "The churches are so messed up, they don't know abortion is wrong in many churches," he said, according to an online recording of one sermon from February 2023. Still, in three lengthy sermons reviewed by the AP, he only mentioned abortion once, focusing more on his love of God and what he saw as the moral decay in his native country. He appears to have hidden his more strident beliefs from his friends back home. "He never talked to me about abortion," Schroeder said. "It seemed to be just that he was a conservative Republican who naturally followed Trump." A married father with five children, Boelter and his wife own a sprawling 3,800-square-foot house on a large rural lot about an hour from downtown Minneapolis that the couple bought in 2023 for more than a half-million dollars. Seeking to reinvent himself He worked for decades in managerial roles for food and beverage manufacturers before seeking to reinvent himself in middle age, according to resumes and a video he posted online. After getting an undergraduate degree in international relations in his 20s, Boelter went back to school and earned a master's degree and then a doctorate in leadership studies in 2016 from Cardinal Stritch University, a private Catholic college in Wisconsin that has since shut down. While living in Wisconsin, records show Boelter and his wife Jenny founded a nonprofit corporation called Revoformation Ministries, listing themselves as the president and secretary. After moving to Minnesota about a decade ago, Boelter volunteered for a position on a state workforce development board, first appointed by then-Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, in 2016, and later by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. He served through 2023. In that position, he may have crossed paths with one of his alleged victims. Hoffman served on the same board, though authorities said it was not immediately clear how much the two men may have interacted. Launching a security firm Records show Boelter and his wife started a security firm in 2018. A website for Praetorian Guard Security Services lists Boelter's wife as the president and CEO while he is listed as the director of security patrols. The company's homepage says it provides armed security for property and events and features a photo of an SUV painted in a two-tone black and silver pattern similar to a police vehicle, with a light bar across the roof and "Praetorian" painted across the doors. Another photo shows a man in black tactical gear with a military-style helmet and a ballistic vest with the company's name across the front. In an online resume, Boelter also billed himself as a security contractor who worked oversees in the Middle East and Africa. On his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he told Chris Fuller, a friend, that he had founded several companies focused on farming and fishing on the Congo River, as well as in transportation and tractor sales. "It has been a very fun and rewarding experience and I only wished I had done something like this 10 years ago," he wrote in a message shared with the AP. But once he returned home in 2023, there were signs that Boelter was struggling financially. That August, he began working for a transport service for a funeral home, mostly picking up bodies of those who had died in assisted living facilities - a job he described as he needed to do to pay bills. Tim Koch, the owner of Metro First Call, said Boelter "voluntarily left" that position about four months ago. "This is devastating news for all involved," Koch said, declining to elaborate on the reasons for Boelter's departure, citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation. Boelter had also started spending some nights away from his family, renting a room in a modest house in northern Minneapolis shared by friends. Heavily armed police executed a search warrant on the home Saturday. 'I'm going to be gone for awhile' In the hours before Saturday's shootings, Boelter texted two roommates to tell them he loved them and that "I'm going to be gone for a while," according to Schroeder, who was forwarded the text and read it to the AP. "May be dead shortly, so I just want to let you know I love you guys both and I wish it hadn't gone this way," Boelter wrote. "I don't want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don't know anything about this. But I love you guys and I'm sorry for the trouble this has caused."
