1 killed, 4 injured in shooting at clinic
Police: Suspect unhappy with care
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 taken to a 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.
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 and had to pause 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 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 domestic terrorism.
“None of the information that we have from our past contact with him would indicate that he was unhappy with, or would direct his anger at, anyone other than people within the facilities where he had been treated or where they had attempted to give treatment,” Budke said.
Deringer said Ulrich was well known to law enforcement before the attack.
Court records for Ulrich list a few 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 charge of violating a harassment restraining order was dismissed last April when the prosecutor said Ulrich was “found mentally incompetent to proceed.”
DENVER — Three suburban Denver officers fired over a photo reenacting a neck hold like the one police used on Elijah McClain before the 23-year-old Black man died in 2019 will not get their jobs back, officials said Tuesday.
In decisions upholding the terminations of Aurora officers Erica Marrero, Kyle Dittrich and Jason Rosenblatt, the Aurora Civil Service Commission noted that the photo, which became public about a month after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, caused pain for McClain’s family and hurt already-strained relations between police and the community.
McClain’s death drew renewed attention last year amid the national reckoning over police brutality and racial injustice, prompting investigations by the city, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI.
Police Chief Vanessa Wilson fired the three officers last year over two photos taken at a memorial to McClain two months after his death. Marrero, Dittrich and another officer who resigned, Jaron Jones, are shown smiling in one photo taken on Oct. 20, 2019, and in another, Jones has his arm around Dittrich’s neck in a fake neck hold like the one used on
McClain.
Dittrich texted the photos to two officers who stopped McClain — Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard — to try to cheer up Woodyard, authorities said. Rosenblatt responded “ha ha,” while Woodyard didn’t reply and deleted the photos. Woodyard wasn’t disciplined.