On a Monday afternoon, November 7, 2016, the life of Donald Joseph Hortsch, a 69-year-old Caucasian male, was tragically cut short in what began as a dispute unrelated to him. Hortsch was simply a customer inside the Dollar Tree store in Burnsville, Minnesota, when a violent confrontation erupted. The events leading to the fatal shooting started when the girlfriend of Grant David Hendrickson, then 27, had an argument with a store employee. During this dispute, she discovered that Hendrickson was a registered sex offender.
After his girlfriend confronted him with this information, Hendrickson drove to the Dollar Tree. He entered the store and confronted the 27-year-old male employee. After a threat, Hendrickson was escorted out of the establishment. However, he quickly returned, this time armed with a 9mm handgun, and began shooting. He targeted the employee, wounding him, but one of the bullets traveled through an aisle shelf. Tragically, that stray bullet struck Donald Hortsch in the head as he was shopping.
As Hendrickson attempted to flee the scene in his car, police who were responding to the active shooter call spotted a vehicle matching the suspect's description and apprehended him in the parking lot without incident. Inside the store, officers found two victims of the shooting. Donald Hortsch was pronounced dead at the scene. The employee he had targeted was shot twice, sustaining injuries that resulted in paralysis below the waist.
Grant David Hendrickson was later indicted by a grand jury and charged with premeditated first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, among other charges. In June 2017, Hendrickson, then 28, pleaded guilty to the murder of Donald Hortsch and the attempted murder of the store employee. His guilty plea brought a legal conclusion to the violent and senseless act that ended one man's life and permanently altered another's over a dispute that had nothing to do with the innocent bystander.
