(AFP) – Police and FBI agents waged a huge manhunt Sunday for a gunman who killed a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota in what officials called a politically motivated attack. As the search stretched into its second day, police appeared to close in on the shooter, finding a car described as related to him, but not the man himself. America reeled from its latest spasm of political violence as lawmakers called for a return to civility in political discourse that has been overheated and angry for years.
Authorities searched for a man identified as Vance Boelter, 57, who also allegedly shot and wounded another lawmaker and his wife early Saturday in the northern state bordering Canada. Officials said Boelter impersonated a police officer as he came to the homes of these couples near Minneapolis and shot them. Additionally, officers found a manifesto and a list of other lawmakers and potential targets in his car. Boelter fled on foot after exchanging gunfire with officers following the second shooting.
On Sunday, officers located another car related to Boelter in a rural area about a 90-minute drive west of Minneapolis, the Sibley County Sheriff’s Office told AFP. Residents were warned of the find, and agents are scouring the area, the office said without detailing how the vehicle is connected to the suspect. Officials have issued security alerts in South Dakota and other states as the hunt continues. US Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota expressed her concern for all political leaders and organizations as she mourned her slain friend, Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman.
“I am concerned about all our political leaders, political organizations,” she stated. “It was politically motivated, and there clearly was some throughline with abortion because of the groups that were on the list, and other things that I’ve heard were in this manifesto. So that was one of his motivations.” As speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2019 to January 2025, Hortman was committed to legislation that protected reproductive rights in the state, according to local media.
America is bitterly divided politically as President Donald Trump embarks on his second term and routinely insults his opponents. Political violence is becoming increasingly common, with Trump himself having survived an assassination attempt last year. An assailant with a hammer attacked the husband of then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022. This year, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home was set on fire.
“We need to bring the tone down,” Klobuchar said on CNN. US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who was attacked by a neighbor in 2017, told NBC, “nothing brings us together more than, you know, mourning for somebody else who’s in political life, Republican or Democrat.”
On Saturday, the FBI released a photo that appears to show Boelter wearing a mask as he stands outside the home of one of the lawmakers. The agency is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. The shootings coincided with a day that starkly illustrated America’s divisions: hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied against Trump across the country while the president presided over a big military parade in Washington—a rare spectacle criticized as an attempt to glorify him.
Trump condemned the killing of Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as the wounding of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. In a conversation Sunday with ABC News, Trump was asked if he planned to call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the election Trump won last year. “Well, it’s a terrible thing. I think he’s a terrible governor. I think he’s a grossly incompetent person,” the president stated. “But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too.”
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