Clinic shooting fatal in Minnesota
Suspect arrested after one person killed, five others wounded
BUFFALO, Minn. — A 67-year-old Minnesota man who was unhappy with the care he’d received at area health centers in recent years opened fire at a clinic Tuesday, killing one person and wounding five others, authorities said.
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.
Gov. Tim Walz said at a news conference that “some improvised explosive devices” were part of the attack, though he didn’t say whether any were detonated. The FBI sent bomb technicians to the scene.
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.
“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,” police Chief Pat Budke said during a later news conference.
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.
“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.
Hennepin County Medical Center spokeswoman Christine Hill said Tuesday night that a person taken to the hospital after being shot at the Buffalo clinic had died. Hill said she could not release any other details.
Wright County Sheriff Sean Deringer said Ulrich was wellknown to law enforcement agencies before the attack.
“We have had several calls for service dating to 2003,” Deringer said.
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.”
Order issued in 2018 and 2019 in the harassment case showed Ulrich was to have no contact with a man.
The order didn’t identify that man beyond giving his name, but the name appeared to match that of a doctor listed on the clinic’s staff list.
It was not known if that doctor was among Ulrich’s victims. A phone call placed to the doctor’s home listing went unanswered Tuesday.
More than three hours after the attack, law enforcement authorities moved to cordon off a neighborhood about a mile from the clinic.
At least a half-dozen law enforcement vehicles were gathered near a small mobile home park near Pulaski Lake in the city. A woman from the sheriff’s office who declined to identify herself said they were executing a search warrant in connection to the clinic shooting. She declined to give any additional information.