Community Gathers To Honor Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman
ST. PAUL (WJON News) -- Mourners, including dignitaries like Governor Tim Walz, U.S. Representative Angie Craig, and dozens of state lawmakers, paid their respects to Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman with a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Capitol.
DFL Senator Ann Johnson Stewart says she still can't believe she's gone.
"She was unfailing. She was so good. She was so good and we could have had her for another 10 to 15 years and she would have done even more good for people who don't even know who she was. She was amazing."
"She was brilliant and authentic and you might not have liked what she was doing but she was doing it for a good reason. She was so good and that's what makes this so hard. You know, we heard about her husband tonight and he was so good. It's really hard to reconcile why such goodness could be taken away."
Mourners like Lori from Maplewood just wanted to come and share tears and memories with others.
"Just to be with other people to grieve and you know share our common feelings about what's happened."
Besides candles, many mourners brought flowers and added messages to the growing memorial outside the Capitol.
The Brooklyn Park home of Melissa Hortman was broken into early Wednesday morning, four days after she and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot.
Police say officers responded around 8 a.m. and found someone had pried off plywood from a rear window and broken the glass to get inside.
The home had already been processed for evidence following Saturday’s double homicide, and nothing appeared to be stolen.
The Hortman family had removed valuables on Tuesday.
Investigators say a police trailer camera was stationed in front of the home, but it's unclear if it captured the break-in.
The Hennepin County Attorney's Office wants to prosecute Vance Boelter before the U-S Attorney's Office in Minnesota gets the case.
Boelter is facing both state and federal charges for the alleged killings of House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shootings of Senator John Hoffman of Champlin and his wife.
A spokesperson for Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty says she asked federal prosecutors to let her office seek murder charges against Boelter first.
The U-S Attorney’s Office has the authority to determine the order in which Boelter is prosecuted.
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