Moment cop widow ‘knew’
Wife’s sorrow as Minn. ‘gunman’ ID’d
The wife of one of the three first responders killed by a Minnesota gunman during a multihour armed standoff early Sunday said she knew immediately that her husband was dead when a police cruiser pulled up to the family home later that morning.
Cindy Elmstrand-Castruita said she is heartbroken after Burnsville Officer Paul Elmstrand — her highschool sweetheart and father of her two children, a 2-year-old and 5-month-old — was slain along with a fellow officer and a paramedic as they responded to an active shooter who had barricaded himself in his house with his family.
The alleged gunman was identified as 38-year-old Shannon Gooden, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
The grieving widow said she initially had no idea what happened to her husband during Sunday’s shooting and was puzzled over an early morning text she got from a friend saying they were sorry for what she was going through, CBS News reported.
Although she initially chalked it up as a mistake, she said she knew what was coming when a police car pulled up in front of her home.
“I looked out my bedroom window and saw a squad car out there,” she told the outlet. “I knew. That’s when I knew he was gone.”
Elmstrand-Castruita said she was proud of Paul, 27, and knew that he likely did everything he could during the incident to protect the kids caught up in the standoff.
The shooter had holed himself up along with a woman and seven children between the ages of 2 and 15, police said.
‘It breaks my heart’
“I think he just had to be the hero. He had to do what he thought was right to protect those little lives even if it meant putting his at risk,” Elmstrand-Castruita said, “and it breaks my heart because now he’s gone. But I know that he thought what he did was right.”
She described her late husband as the “most generous, loving, patient person” she’s ever known, adding that he always took his job seriously and was quick to “drop everything to help someone who was in need.”
Elmstrand joined the Burnsville Police Department in 2017 and tied the knot with Elmstrand-Castruita the following year.
Elmstrand, alongside Officer Matthew Ruge, 27, and firefighter Adam Finseth, 40, were gunned down Sunday during the dramatic confrontation in Burnsville, about 15 miles south of Minneapolis.
A fourth officer was injured in the shooting but was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
The gunman, whose motive was still under investigation, died at the scene from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Officers were responding to a domestic abuse call, and following the exchange of gunfire, the woman and children were safely removed from the home, police said.
Elmstrand and Ruge were the fifth and sixth officers in the US killed by gunfire so far this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which records instances of fallen members of law enforcement.