Shotgun in hand, Ray Kmetz paused after walking up the eight steps leading to the chambers where the New Hope City Council was meeting that January night. In a small hallway nearby, 31 police officers, their relatives and city employees had gathered after a swearing-in and awards ceremony.
Startled to see law enforcement officers blocking his path to the chambers, Kmetz raised his semiautomatic shotgun and fired once. Officer Beau Schoenhard, whose wife and 15-month-old son were nearby, saw Kmetz level the gun and lunged at him, knocking the muzzle upward just as he fired. In the ensuing chaos, Schoenhard was wounded by bullets fired by a fellow officer, who also shot and killed Kmetz.
The Jan. 26 attack by Kmetz, a 68-year-old mentally ill man who had a history of threats against the City Council and more than 100 contacts with police over several decades, landed Schoenhard and fellow officer Joshua Eernisse in the hospital. Several others received minor shrapnel wounds.
This month, New Hope Police Chief Tim Fournier, publicly sharing details about the shooting for the first time, said the area around the City Council chambers resembled a war zone, with fragments of Kmetz's shot flying into the chambers and ricocheting off walls as people dashed for cover.
Evidence uncovered later indicated that the shooting wasn't a spur-of-the-moment plan by a man suffering from paranoid delusion. In Kmetz's Cadillac was ample evidence of planning — two shotguns, a large cache of ammunition, pepper spray, and plastic handcuffs and ankle chains apparently to be used to tie up council members for a possible hostage situation or mass killing.
"This was the darkest day in my career, but also the proudest, because of how my officers responded," said Fournier, whose badge was hit by shrapnel. "But then you start thinking of the 'what ifs.' You can't let it get ahold of you. They are self-destructive thoughts."
Following four surgeries, Schoenhard returned to work recently; Eernisse returned two months after the incident. Officer Erick Dyer and Capt. Scott Crocker, who both shot Kmetz, were cleared of any wrongdoing by a Hennepin County grand jury after a day's worth of testimony in October. The officers involved in the shooting have a combined 37 years of police experience.
An angry, suspicious man
Even before Jan. 26, police knew a violent encounter with Kmetz was possible.