The audio of an emergency call made after two Democratic lawmakers were attacked in their homes has been released.
On June 14, Minnesota lawmakers Melissa Hortman, 55, and John Hoffman, 60, and their spouses were attacked in their respective homes, with emergency dispatch audio having since been released of the moment dispatchers attended the scene.
The attack killed Minnesota Rep. Hortman and her husband Mark, while Senator Hoffman and his wife Yvette remain in hospital receiving treatment for their injuries.
Police confirmed that they were first notified of the shooting at Hoffman’s home at approximately 2.00am, according to Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
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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.
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.
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.
Topics: Police, Gun Crime, Mental Health, US News, Politics
Britt Jones