The man suspected of assassinating a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband gave an anti-LGBTQ+ speech in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2023.
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Minnesota authorities arrested Vance Boelter on second-degree murder and two charges of attempted second-degree murder, according to a Fox affiliate in Minneapolis. Court documents allege Boelter killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former Speaker of the House, and her husband, Mark, in their home in the suburb of Brooklyn Park. Police say Boelter also shot Minnesota state Sen. Mark Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home, but both of those victims survived.
Related: Melissa Hortman, assassinated MN lawmaker, was a champion for families and LGBTQ+ rights
The attacks prompted a manhunt over nearly two days that resulted in Boelter’s arrest on Sunday.
Before the shooting, Boelter was listed on a website for Minnesota Africans United, a nonprofit providing business and aid to African countries, as CEO of Red Lion Group and Praetorian Guard Security Services. Since Boelter was identified as a suspect in the shooting, the organization has taken his biography down, but it remains accessible in web archives.
Videos surfaced online this weekend showing Boelter speaking at a conference in Matadi, the DRC, as reported by Wired. Those showed him discussing a food pilot program, but also diverging against a litany of what he called sins corrupting America.
“America’s in a bad place,” he said in one clip featured on Patriot Takes.
“There’s people, especially in America,” he says in a feature spotlighted by independent journalist Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning. “They don’t know what sex they are. They don’t know their sexual orientation — they’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”
The event appeared missionary and evangelical in nature, with Boelter issuing Christian nationalist rhetoric.
“You will never be happy on this earth,” he said, “even in the heavens above.”
