Opioid reliance may have fueled clinic shooting

BUFFALO, Minn. — An alleged gunman’s addiction to opioid medication was the “driving force” behind last week’s shooting at a Minnesota health clinic that left one person dead and four injured, a veteran investigator said in his application for a search warrant.

Wright County Deputy Patrick Bailey said authorities found a plastic bag containing six oxycodone pills when they searched Gregory Ulrich’s hotel room after the Feb. 9 shooting at an Allina Health clinic in Buffalo, a small city about 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis. Bailey also described a video in which Ulrich mentioned taking more than 30 pills at a time.

Ulrich, 67, is charged with murder, attempted murder and other counts in the shooting that left Lindsay Overby, a 37-year-old medical assistant, dead.

According to the charges, Ulrich walked into the clinic and began shooting staff after they asked if they could help him. He shot two people in the reception area and three others in the clinic’s interior. He is also accused of setting off three suspected pipe bombs.

Bailey wrote about Ulrich’s apparent dependency on opioids in an application for a search warrant for Ulrich’s medical records.

KARE-TV reports that Ulrich had back surgery in 2016, and shortly after that, he was taken back to the hospital after overdosing on opioids, which led a doctor at the clinic to cut off his supply of pain medication.

Court documents show that Ulrich threatened a mass shooting at the clinic in 2018. That threat led to a restraining order. A charge of violating the restraining order was dismissed last April when the prosecutor said Ulrich was found “mentally incompetent to proceed.”

Gregory Paul Ulrich