BUFFALO, Minn. (AP) – A 67-year-old man dissatisfied with the health care he received opened fire at a clinic on Tuesday and injured five people, and bomb technicians were investigating a suspicious device left there and others at a motel where he was staying. hosted, officials said.
All five victims were rushed to the hospital. Three remained stable, but in critical condition on Tuesday night, and a fourth was discharged. The condition of the fifth victim was not immediately known.
The attack took place on Tuesday morning at an Allina clinic in Buffalo, a community of about 15,000 people about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Minneapolis. Officials said Buffalo’s Gregory Paul Ulrich opened fire at the facility and was arrested before noon.
Although the police said it was too early to say whether Ulrich was targeting a specific doctor, court records show that at one point he was condemned to have no contact with a man whose name coincides with that of a clinic doctor.
As authorities searched for more victims at the clinic, they found the suspect device and evacuated the building, said Wright County sheriff Sean Deringer.
It was not clear whether the device exploded, but TV images showed several broken flat glass windows in the clinic. Deringer said suspicious devices were also found at a local Super 8 motel where Ulrich was staying, and there were at least two broken windows there as well.
Police chief Pat Budke was thrilled and had to pause during a news conference while telling reporters that “our hearts are broken as a community”. Although the exact reason is not immediately known, Budke said Ulrich has a long history of conflict with health clinics in the area.
“All I can say is that it is a story that spans several years and there is certainly a story that he is unhappy with the health care … with the health care he received,” said Budke.
Budke said Ulrich’s story led investigators to believe that he was targeting the clinic or someone inside, but that it was too early in the investigation to find out if he was a specific doctor. He said the shooting did not appear to be a case of domestic terrorism.
“None of the information we have in our previous contact with him would indicate that he was unhappy or direct his anger towards anyone other than the people inside the facility where he was treated or where they tried to administer the treatment,” said Budke.
Deringer said Ulrich was well known to the police before the attack, and there have been calls for assistance since 2003.
Ulrich’s court records list a handful of arrests and convictions for drunk driving and possession of small amounts of marijuana from 2004 to 2015, mainly in Wright County, including two convictions for serious misdemeanor driving while resulting in short prison sentences. . A 2018 charge of violating a harassment restraining order was dismissed last April, when the prosecutor said Ulrich was “deemed mentally unable to proceed”.
Order issued in 2018 and 2019 in the case of harassment showed that Ulrich should not have contact with a man named Andrew John Burgdorf. He was not identified in the files, but the clinic’s staff list includes a Dr. Andrew J. Burgdorf, who works in family medicine and geriatric care.
It was not known whether Burgdorf was among Ulrich’s victims. A call made to a list of Burgdorf homes was not answered on Tuesday.
A judicial services agent who conducted a provisional investigation wrote in a June 2019 lawsuit that he had just learned that Ulrich had asked the police for a “purchase authorization” – apparently meaning an authorization to buy a weapon – but had not yet been okay. The agent said he “strongly recommended” that Ulrich “not be allowed to use or possess any dangerous weapons or firearms as a condition of his probation”.
Ulrich also raised questions for a local church. According to an August 2019 update on the Zion Lutheran Church website, the church obtained a non-invasion order for Ulrich after the pastor received a disturbing letter. Church officials received a photo of Ulrich and said to call 911 if he showed up at any of Zion’s properties.
The FBI sent its bomb technicians to the scene, and the Minneapolis Police Department sent its bomb squad. Members of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Enforcement Group and special agents from the state’s Department of Criminal Seizure also responded.
The clinic is just outside Buffalo, near an old red barn with peeling paint. Dozens of emergency vehicles and police officers carrying weapons were in place, establishing a perimeter. TV images showed little activity in the clinic itself.
Hours after the attack, police cordoned off a small trailer park near the city’s Pulaski Lake, about a kilometer from the clinic, and searched a mobile home where Ulrich had lived. The police came and went in the house wearing rubber gloves. Several neighbors who refused to provide their names described Ulrich as an argumentative and said they tried to avoid him.
Tom Potter, a 43-year-old man who lives in the neighborhood, said Ulrich was nice to Potter’s children, but described him as “a strange guy”.
“He got into fights with his neighbors, accused them of stealing things,” said Potter.
He said that Ulrich spent a lot of time on a bench by the lake, listening to the radio, fishing and “always drinking”.
Another neighbor, Walter Rohde, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he was shocked to learn that Ulrich was suspected of shooting people. He said that Ulrich helped him build a shed over the summer and used to come and sit by his campfire at night to talk.
“I just knew him as a kind old man,” said Rohde.
Rohde said Ulrich was unemployed, living on a disability.
Most of the doctors listed on the clinic’s website are family doctors. It was not immediately clear whether the clinic provides COVID-19 vaccines. The Allina website says it provides injections for employees and older patients in just three locations across its extensive system.
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Ehlke reported from Milwaukee. Associated Press writers Tim Sullivan in Buffalo and Amy Forliti and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed.
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Mohamed Ibrahim is a member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that puts journalists in local newsrooms to report on covert issues.