ST. PAUL, Minnesota (Reuters) -Thousands of mourners, including former U.S. President Joe Biden, filed through Minnesota’s state Capitol Rotunda on Friday to pay final respects to slain lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were gunned down by an assassin earlier this month.
The couple lay in state in St. Paul on the eve of a private funeral set for Saturday morning, two weeks after a man impersonating a police officer shot them to death at their home in what authorities are treating as a politically motivated murder.
For several hours, members of the public lined up in a column of mourners stretching across the front plaza of the state Capitol building and along an adjacent boulevard.
After entering the building, people walked single-file past the Hortmans’ flower-bedecked caskets. A portrait of each stood next to their respective coffins.
Perched between them was an urn bearing the remains of their golden retriever, Gilbert, along with a photograph of the pet. The dog, too, was shot in the attack and later euthanized.
Biden arrived at the statehouse late in the afternoon. After the public was cleared from the rotunda for security purposes, the Democratic former president was ushered in alone. He paused for a moment in front of the caskets, then exited the building.
Following his departure, the rotunda was reopened to the public, and the procession of mourners resumed. Still more people joined the line outside, hoping for a chance to pay their respects. The viewing was scheduled to end at 5 p.m. local time.
Representative Hortman, the top-ranking Democrat in the Minnesota House, became the first woman to lie in state in the St. Paul Capitol Rotunda, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Her husband was believed to be the first person other than a military figure or public official to be so honored.
The suspect in their June 14 killings, Vance Boelter, 57, is also accused of shooting and wounding a second Democratic legislator, state Senator John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, in their home a few miles away.’
The accused gunman was arrested on the night of June 16 following a massive two-day manhunt that was the largest in state history.
Boelter faces state and federal murder charges. According to prosecutors, investigators recovered notebooks from his car and residence that included the names of dozens of Democratic legislators, along with abortion-rights advocates.
The shootings unfolded against a backdrop of increasing political violence in the U.S. in an era of extreme social and partisan polarization.
(Reporting by Tim Evans in St. Paul; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio)
