Law enforcement continued to search Saturday night for the suspect in the politically motivated killings of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of a second lawmaker and his wife.

The suspect, 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter, is believed to have posed as a police officer to gain access to the Brooklyn Park home of State Rep. Melissa Hortman, according to law-enforcement officials. The 55-year-old lawmaker and her husband were fatally shot there early Saturday morning.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the shootings an act of “targeted political violence.”

Boelter was photographed in Minneapolis that morning wearing a cowboy hat, a dark jacket and light pants and carrying a dark bag, authorities said. He is likely trying to flee the Twin Cities region and is considered armed and dangerous, according to officials.

He is also suspected in the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman, 60, and his wife, Yvette, in their Champlin, Minn., home, Walz said. They have undergone surgery, he said. Officials said they were cautiously optimistic both would survive what Walz said was an assassination attempt. The victims’ homes are about 8 miles apart and located roughly 15 to 20 miles north of Minneapolis.

Authorities said they found a list in the suspect’s vehicle that named other public officials. Those officials were alerted and have received additional security, police said.

Vance Luther Boelter

The suspect’s list targets prominent individuals who support abortion-rights in Minnesota, including many Democratic lawmakers, according to an official who has seen the list.

Representatives for Rep. Kelly Morrison (D., Minn.) and Sen. Tina Smith (D., Minn.) said Morrison and Smith’s names appeared on the suspect’s list.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Boelter knew Hoffman or Hortman, authorities said.

“We are still exploring that,” said Drew Evans, superintendent of the bureau of criminal apprehension with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. “There is certainly some overlap with some public meetings, I will say, with Sen. Hoffman and the individual, but we don’t know the nature of the relationship or if they actually knew each other.”

Law-enforcement also found several rifles in Boelter’s vehicle and believe he may still be armed with a pistol, an official said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is offering a reward for any information leading to the arrest of Boelter. It also released four images of the suspect, including one of him dressed as a police officer and wearing a mask of a bald man while holding a flashlight.

Officials described Boelter as a 6-foot-1, 220-pound man. Authorities encouraged the public to call 911 if they encounter him and said he is extremely dangerous.

Records show that he lived with his family in a house in Green Isle, Minn., a city about an hour’s drive from Hortman’s home. He has held a variety of jobs, including running a private security firm and serving as a Christian preacher.

Minnesota State Patrol on Saturday released a photo of papers in the suspect’s vehicle that appeared to include handmade “No Kings” signs. Hundreds of “No Kings” rallies were held around the country Saturday to protest President Trump’s policies. The State Patrol asked the public not to attend planned demonstrations in Minnesota in light of the shootings.

A vehicle is towed away from an alley behind Vance Luther Boelter’s home in Minneapolis.

In Texas, state legislators were warned about threats to their safety at protests at the state Capitol in Austin. State police said they had identified a credible threat against lawmakers planning to attend and had evacuated the Capitol and grounds ahead of the evening event. State police said in a message to lawmakers that they were being vigilant about copycat incidents after the Minnesota shootings.

Minnesota police responded first to Hoffman’s home for a call about a shooting around 2 a.m. Officers then went to check on Hortman’s home around 3:35 a.m. and spotted the suspect, said Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley.

“They noticed that there was a police vehicle in the driveway with the lights, emergency lights on, and what appeared to be a police officer at the door coming out of the house,” said Bruley. “When our officers confronted him, the individual immediately fired upon the officers, who exchanged gunfire.”

The suspect, who wore a badge and police gear, retreated into the house and escaped on foot out the back, he said.

“This is somebody that clearly had been impersonating a police officer, using the trust of this badge and this uniform to manipulate their way into the home,” Bruley said.

Hortman’s husband, Mark, was pulled out of the home by police and pronounced dead, Bruley said. A drone found the lawmaker’s body in the home, he said.

Investigators at the house of state Sen. John Hoffman after the lawmaker and his wife were shot multiple times.

Outside state Rep. Melissa Hortman’s home, where the former Minnesota House speaker and her husband were fatally shot early Saturday.

Trump, who was briefed on the shootings, said that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”

Walz spoke Saturday afternoon with Vice President JD Vance about the attacks, according to a person close to the governor. Walz, a Democrat who debated Republican Vance when they were both vice presidential nominees in 2024, expressed appreciation for the coordination between federal law enforcement and Minnesota public-safety officials, the source said.

Hortman is a former Minnesota House speaker. She started in that role in 2019 when Walz became governor, and the two had a close working relationship.

During testimony before a congressional committee Thursday in Washington, Walz noted how narrowly divided his state legislature was this year. That is one reason Hortman was no longer serving as speaker of the Minnesota House.

From the start of this year’s session in January until early February, she led a boycott of House activity to deny Republicans a quorum to conduct business because the GOP had threatened to unseat a Democrat who won re-election by only 14 votes. Once a power-sharing agreement was reached, Hortman served as minority leader until March, when a special election created a tie between the parties in the House and her title changed to DFL leader and she was granted significant powers alongside Republican Speaker Lisa Demuth. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor, or DFL, Party is how Democrats are known in Minnesota.

The legislature adjourned in late May, but Walz called a special session earlier this week. That meeting was completed early Tuesday morning with the passage of a $66 billion state budget that averted a government shutdown.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, Hortman said it was important for members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party to use the majority they enjoyed in the legislature to push progressive legislation.

“The governor’s point of view, and our point of view, was you win elections for a reason,” she said at the time. “All these things that we talked about that we were going to do in the 2023-24 session were things we had run on.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pauses as he speaks about the killing of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband.

Police deploy to search for the shooter of two Minnesota state lawmakers.

During her time as speaker in 2023, the state became something of a laboratory for many of the Democratic Party’s policy goals, once Walz had a legislature fully controlled by Democrats. Besides establishing the goal of a carbon-free electrical grid by 2040, the state also passed paid family and medical leave, sick leave, transgender-rights protections, a tax credit aimed at low-income parents, and a $1 billion investment in affordable housing.

“I describe myself as a moderate,” Hortman said in the August 2024 interview.

A memorial for state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband outside the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on Saturday.

Still, she talked about how she felt strongly about gun control—including “criminal background checks and red flag laws”—as well as state protections for abortion rights.

“The electorate is so calcified now,” Hortman, a lawyer, said of the deepened political division she felt in Minnesota since she was first elected to the state legislature in 2004.

Write to John McCormick at [email protected], Sadie Gurman at [email protected] and Joseph De Avila at [email protected]