Mark Bruley’s phone went off at 3:45 a.m. on June 14 — the loud ring shattering the quiet darkness surrounding the Brooklyn Park police chief’s home in Minnesota.
The sergeant on the other end of the line was grim, her voice thick with the weight of a crisis unfolding.
“It’s pretty bad, chief,” she said.
A Minnesota state senator’s daughter had called 911 two hours earlier. Her parents, the daughter said, had been shot by a masked man at their home in Champlin, just eight miles north of Brooklyn Park.
But Bruley’s sergeant wasn’t done. Two officers, she said, had exchanged gunfire with the suspect while conducting a welfare check at the home of Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman, right in Brooklyn Park.
Bruley rushed out the door, his sergeant telling him that Mark Hortman, the lawmaker’s husband, was dead in the entryway.
“They didn’t know the whereabouts of Melissa,” he recalled his sergeant saying.
Police units were on the ground when Bruley arrived at the Hortmans’ home. The sound of drones humming filled the air and emergency lights flashed in the street.
Drone footage showed Melissa Hortman’s body, riddled with bullets, slumped in her home.
The full scope of the nightmare began to crystallize even as the chief learned how the instincts of a Brooklyn Park sergeant put the police on a collision course with Vance Boelter, the man accused of assassinating the Hortmans after shooting a state senator and his wife, at a critical moment.
A gut feeling
Earlier, at the Brooklyn Park precinct, Sgt. Reilly Nordan’s shift had just ended when news came in that state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife had been shot.
Nordan, a seasoned veteran of the Brooklyn Park Police Department, was about to head home for the night when he had a gut feeling he couldn’t ignore.
Years ago, Hortman, who served Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2019 to early 2025, had reached out to the department for extra patrols. Nordan figured that Hortman would likely be concerned, and in search of additional security after hearing about the attack on Hoffman.
He suggested that a couple of the officers still on patrol conduct a welfare check. The sergeant knew Hortman’s address by heart, Bruley said, and gave it to the officers.
Two officers arrived at the Hortmans’ house at 3:30 a.m. A black SUV resembling a police car was parked outside the house, according to a federal affidavit. The sirens were flashing, and a man dressed like a police officer was at the door, court documents said.
The man, later identified as Boelter, fired several shots at the door and entered the house, the affidavit said. More gunshots followed, and Boelter fled – vanishing into the darkness, according to court documents.
‘Saved countless lives’
Officers searched Boelter’s SUV later and found an apparent hit list of more than 45 state and federal public officials. The officials were “all Democrats,” according acting US Attorney Joe Thompson.
“I look at it and immediately I recognize many names, including the governor and others. That’s when I went, ‘Oh my gosh. This is, straight up, a large-scale assassination attempt,” Bruley said.
The list included Melissa Hortman along with prominent lawmakers like Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.
The “trip history” of a navigation system in the car included the addresses for Hortman and Hoffman, according to the affidavit. It also had three other addresses belonging to Minnesota public officials.
Two other public officials appear to have been targeted that night. One was away from home — but the other wasn’t.
At 2:36 a.m., just half an hour after the first attack of the night at the Hoffmans, a local officer was on her way to state Sen. Ann Rest’s home in New Hope, Police Chief Timothy Hoyt told CNN via email.
The officer spotted a black SUV on her way to the house, Hoyt said
“She attempted to contact the driver who stared straight ahead,” Hoyt said. “With no response, she drove to the senator’s house and waited for other officers.”
The SUV, later identified as belonging to Boelter, eventually drove away, Hoyt said.
Her “proactive actions” likely prevented another tragedy, he said.
“This man was extremely motivated,” Bruley said. He “attempted four addresses, was successful at two of them.”
Lawmakers received extra security in the wake of the Minnesota shootings and the manhunt for Boelter. The 57-year-old was eventually captured 43 hours later.
“There’s no question in my mind that (the suspect) would go on to kill many legislators until we stopped him,” Bruley said.
The police chief recounted telling Nordan the nation considered him “a hero.”
Nordan seemed physically uncomfortable, Bruley said, and told the police chief he was just doing his job.
“Your job saved countless lives of other legislators,” Bruley said.
CNN’s Whitney Wild contributed to this report.
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