The congresswoman was enjoying a quiet morning at home in the Minneapolis suburbs last Saturday when her doorbell rang.
It was around 6 a.m., Kelly Morrison recalled. Far too early for visitors. But as she padded to the front door, Morrison noticed a police car in her driveway.
“Sorry to bother you so early,” the officers said, “but we need you to know that there’s a man going around impersonating a law enforcement officer, and we need you to stay in your house, shelter in place, and do not answer the door to anyone.”
Stunned, Morrison asked for more details, she recalled to CNN. But the officers simply told her: “There have been some concerning events” and they’d be patrolling her street “more closely.”
Morrison locked her front door and tried to go back to her quiet morning alone at home, she said.
But her eyes kept drifting to the street.
She did not yet know afierce manhuntwas underway for a gunman who, just hours earlier, hadgravely injureda state senator and his wife at their nearby home, then assassinated another state lawmaker,Melissa Hortman,and her husband in theirs.
Morrison also did not yet have a critical piece of information that would upend not only her quiet weekend but also her perception of life as a public servant and the state of America’s democracy:
Her name was on the gunman’s allegedhit list, too.
The attacks had begun just after 2 that morning when a man carrying a handgun and wearing the tactical vest and body armor of a police officer pounded on state Sen. John Hoffman’s windowless, double-boltedfront door.
“He arrived in a Black SUV with emergency lights turned on and with a license plate that read ‘Police,’” Joseph Thompson, the acting US attorney for Minnesota, would later tell reporters.
“Sen. Hoffman had a security camera; I’ve seen the footage … and it is chilling,” he’d add.
Authorities soon identified Vance Boelter, 57, as the man masquerading as a police officer and described in chilling detailhow he“stalked his victims like prey.”
After wounding Hoffman and his wife, Boeltervisitedtwo other lawmakers’ nearby homes, court documents later would assert: One was out of town; the other’s life may have been spared by thetimely interventionof a local police officer.
Boelter then went to Hortman’s home, killing her and her husband, Mark, authorities would posit, beforefiring at policeand vanishing into a moonlit night.
Investigators in what became the largest manhunt in Minnesota history soon found among Boelter’s belongingsapparent hit listsnaming dozens more potential targets, most of them Democrats or figures with ties to the abortion rights movement, including Planned Parenthood, court documents would say.
On a conference call later that morning with Democratic lawmakers, Morrison learned the tragic truth of what had happened to the Hoffmans and the Hortmans – her friends and colleagues – and prompted her early morning visit from local police.
It wasn’t long before the Minnesota Department of Public Safety also let her know she, too, was among those targeted.
As an OB-GYN who had volunteered for Planned Parenthood, Morrison had been targeted with threats of violence in the past, she said. Still, this was “unnerving, particularly when we lost Melissa and Mark in such a shocking and violent way.”
The congresswoman immediately called her husband, John Willoughby, who was out of town, to tell him about the shootings.
And that she could be a target.
The former Army Ranger “moved into protective mode,” Morrison recalled, and began making his way home.
Even with local officers already stationed outside their house, the couple hired private security, she said. And Morrison put on the panic buttonCapitol Policepreviously had recommended she buy.
Across town, another state House official, Rep. Esther Agbaje, was glued to her phone as texts and emails poured in with updates on the manhunt.
She left her home and spent the day with her fiancé and his mom, she recalled to CNN. She was lying low, she told her friends and family, in an abundance of caution.
Meanwhile, Morrison and her husband considered what to tell their grown children. “There’s all these different moments as a parent where you question what the right thing to do is,” the congresswoman recalled, “but we knew we had to let them know.”
Their daughters, traveling in Minnesota, wanted to come home; their son, who was out of state, stayed in constant contact.
Then, Morrison made another call: to her own parents.
“I had been pretty calm,” she said, “but when I heard my mom’s voice, I definitely kind of lost it.”
By Saturday evening, the tenor of Agbaje’s weekend also had shifted – from mindful public servant attuned to the latest safety alerts to an unwitting role far closer than she’d imagined to the frightening storyline deeply underway.
“For most of the day,” the state representative said, “I didn’t know that I was a potential target.”
Then, she, too, learned her name was on Boelter’s list.
Sunday arrived with no outward signs Boelter soon would be caught. And Agbaje had grown so distracted, she forgot it was Father’s Day.
“I forgot to call my own Dad until, like, the middle of the afternoon,” she told CNN. “I have a really good Dad. He was concerned about how I was doing.”
Officers had warned Morrison it would be dangerous for her to go ahead with plans to celebrate the holiday with relatives. “I FaceTime’d with my dad and my brother to wish them a happy Father’s Day,” she said, “and tell them how much I love them and how grateful I am for them.”
Morrison and Agbaje also spent hours across the weekend reassuring their constituents as word of the attacks spread and reiterating a common message in the face of what seemed to be the latest wave in arising tide of political violenceafflicting the United States.
We can’t go on this way.
“This was the moment where I kind of feel like everything has changed in the United States,” Morrison said. “This happened in my district, and these are my people. We have to decide together that this is not the path that we want to go down as a country.”
But even fortified resolve could not quell the fear of lawmakers whom the suspected assassin had called out by name.
On Sunday evening, the fact remained: Boelter was still on the run.
Not, though, for much longer.
Some 43 hours after the gunman barged through the Hoffmans’ red front door, Boelter crawled out of a forest near his own home, about an hour’s drive away. He wasarrestedand faces six federalcharges, including two that could carry thedeath penalty, and four state charges, including two counts of second-degree murder.
But for Morrison and Agbaje – along with untold others on the hit lists and people across Minneapolis and beyond – the conclusion of the police chase has yielded to another pursuit, one perhaps less riveting but, if possible, more heart-wrenching.
“I think now that the acuteness of the manhunt and the trauma from the weekend is subsiding, we’re just (feeling) real grief and sitting with the loss,” Agbaje said.
After decades of increasingly toxic political rhetoric and the dehumanization of lawmakers, many Americans have lost sight of our shared humanity, she continued. “For those of us who want to keep this democracy, we have to remember that we solve our disagreements through discussion and debate; we can’t devolve to guns and violence.”
Though Hoffman has a long path to recovery, Agbaje looks forward to the day she again will work alongside the fierce advocate for health equity, especially for those with disabilities, she said.
“He’s really funny,” Agbaje said, then paused, recognizing this kind of violence can change a person.
“I’m sure it’ll be different, but I’m glad that he’ll still be around,” she said of Hoffman. “Whether you agree or disagree with them on policy issues, (lawmakers are) real people. They have families, they have people who care about them. At some point, we have to remember the humanity in each other.”
Morrison and her colleagues gathered privately Wednesday night, she said, to mourn and honor Hortman, a public servant who dedicated herself and her career to the state and the people she loved.
“I think she’ll go down as the most consequential speaker of the House in Minnesota’s history,” Morrison said. “It was never about Melissa; it was always about the work … the end goal was always to make life better for Minnesotans.”
“It’s just hard to put into words what a devastating loss this is for our entire state.”
The attacks of just a week ago fell exactly eight years after agunman opened fire on lawmakersas they practiced for a congressional charity baseball game and critically wounded Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a Republican now leading the House majority.
Morrison worries about the chilling effect political violence could have on future public servants, she said. But even so soon after facing her own imminent threat, Morrison is far from scared.
“I think it’s important for people to remember that this is not just an attack on those individual legislators; this is an attack on democracy itself. It’s an attack on Americans’ ability to be represented well,” she said.
“I am not afraid of cowards like this man, and I would encourage people, if you’ve ever thought of running for office, to please continue pursuing it.”