(Washington) Manhunt continues on Sunday in Minnesota to find the suspect of the murder of a local elected representative and her husband, a “deliberate act of political violence” in the words of Tim Walz, governor of this state of the northern United States.
The FBI offered a reward of up to $ 50,000 for any information allowing the authorities to get their hands on Vance Boelter, accused of having killed Melissa Hortman and her husband on Saturday morning, as well as having seriously injured another elected official from the suburbs of Minneapolis, John Hoffman, and his wife.
This double attack on two Democratic officials shocked the political class of this rather quiet state and provoked stupor among elected officials across the country, stuck in a tense political atmosphere.
The suspect, in a photo shared by the authorities, appears with a police uniform and what looks like a latex mask covering his head entirely, ringing a door in the dark.
It was on the night of Friday to Saturday that he is suspected of having gone to the homes of John Hoffman and then Melissa Hortman in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis.
Photo George Walker IV, Associated Press
Representative Melissa Hortman was killed at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
He escaped by leaving a manifesto in his car, whose content is not known, and a list of elected officials, including the two aims and other political figures of the state.
Vance Boelter, “a 57-year-old white man”, considered “armed and dangerous”, was seen for the last time on Saturday morning “with a clear cowboy hat”, according to the police, who launched “hundreds” of agents on Saturday.
FBI photos, provided by the Associated Press
The suspect Vance Boelter
“Link with abortion”
Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat senator, said she was on Sunday “worried about all our political leaders” after this “politically motivated attack. »»
“There was a link with abortion, due to the groups” present on the list – including clinics for the media – found in the suspect’s car, she added in an interview with the NBC channel.
Melissa Hortman, 55 and mother of two, was a former president of the Minnesota House of Representatives. She had made the protection of the right to abortion her high priority.
“We need to lower the tension” political, insisted Amy Klobuchar on CNN.
Kentucky Rand Paul’s republican senator, himself attacked by a neighbor in 2017, told NBC on Sunday that “nothing brings us closer than the mourning of another policy, democrat or republican”.
The Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz, a former Kamala Harris running mate in the last presidential election, ordered the sobbles of the flags in his state.
Photo Tim Evans, Reuters
An American flag floats at half mast at the Capitol of the State of Minnesota
What “seems to be a politically motivated assassination”, in the words of the latter, intervened in ever more fractured United States, between deployment of soldiers in Los Angeles to repress the demonstrations, a military parade wanted by Donald Trump in Washington and gatherings against him across the country.
The current president himself escaped an assassination attempt during a campaign rally last July in Pennsylvania.
Questioned Sunday morning by an ABC journalist on the situation in Minnesota and if he intended to call Tim Walz, a former political opponent, Donald Trump replied: “It’s terrible. I think he is a very bad governor, someone who is completely incompetent. But I could call it, as I could call other people. ”
