1 dead, 4 wounded in shooting at health clinic

Buffalo, Minn. — A 67-year-old man unhappy with the health care he’d received opened fire at a clinic Tuesday, killing one person and wounding four others, and bomb technicians were investigating a suspicious device left there and others at a motel where he was staying, authorities said.

All five victims were rushed to the hospital, and a hospital spokeswoman confirmed the one death Tuesday night. Three remained in stable but critical condition and a fourth had been discharged.

The attack happened Tuesday morning at an Allina clinic in Buffalo, a community of about 15,000 people roughly 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Authorities said Gregory Paul Ulrich, of Buffalo, opened fire at the facility and was arrested before noon.

Though police said it was too early to tell if Ulrich had targeted a specific doctor, court records show he at one point had been ordered to have no contact with a man whose name matches that of a doctor at the clinic.

As authorities searched the clinic for more victims, they found the suspicious device and evacuated the building, Wright County Sheriff Sean Deringer said.

It was not immediately clear whether that device exploded, but TV footage showed several shattered plate-glass windows at the clinic. Deringer said suspicious devices were also found at a local Super 8 motel where Ulrich had been staying, and there were at least two shattered windows there as well.

Hennepin County Medical Center spokeswoman Christine Hill said Tuesday night that a person brought to the hospital after being shot at the Buffalo clinic had died. Hill said she could not release any other details.

Police Chief Pat Budke became emotional during a news conference as he told reporters “our heart breaks as a community.” While an exact motive wasn’t immediately known, Budke said Ulrich has had a long history of conflict with health care clinics in the area.

“All I can say is, it’s a history that spans several years and there’s certainly a history of him being unhappy with health care ... with the health care that he’d received,” Budke said.

Budke said Ulrich’s history led investigators to believe he was targeting the clinic or someone inside but that it was too early in the investigation to know if it was a specific doctor. He said the shooting did not appear to be a case of domestic terrorism.

Deringer said Ulrich was well known to law enforcement before the attack, and there were calls for service dating back to 2003.

Court records for Ulrich list a handful of arrests and convictions for drunken driving and possession of small amounts of marijuana from 2004 through 2015, mostly in Wright County, including two convictions for gross misdemeanor drunken driving that resulted in short jail sentences. A 2018 charge of violating a harassment restraining order was dismissed last April when the prosecutor said Ulrich was “found mentally incompetent to proceed.”