BUFFALO, Minnesota — A man who stormed a medical clinic in Minnesota, fatally shot one person and wounded four others was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without parole on Friday.
Gregory Ulrich opened fire Feb. 9, 2021 at the Allina Crossroads Clinic in Buffalo. A jury earlier this month found Ulrich guilty of the 11 criminal charges against him, including premeditated first-degree murder for the death of medical assistant Lindsay Overbay.
Four other clinic staffers survived but suffered serious injuries. Ulrich was charged with attempted murder in those shootings.
During the June 15 sentencing hearing, Wright County Attorney Brian Lutes told the judge the surviving victims decided not to give impact statements because they didn't want Ulrich to hear their voices again.
"He doesn't deserve a second of their time," Lutes said.
According to KARE 11 reporter Lou Raguse, who was in the courtroom, Ulrich took advantage of his captive audience to rant and deflect blame for not being prescribed pain medication. As Ulrich was removed from the courtroom, the gallery of about 50 people gave prosecutors a round of applause.
In testimony during his trial, Ulrich, 68, admitted that he bought the gun, assembled pipe bombs and carried out the attack. However, he maintained that he was driven by excruciating pain that he said the medical team at Allina failed to properly manage and that he never intended to actually kill anyone.
Prosecutors countered by arguing Ulrich absolutely knew what he was doing that day. They played a pair of cellphone videos Ulrich recorded of himself a couple of months before the attack where he looked into the camera and said older folks should grab their pistols and go down to their clinics to kill as many nurses as possible if cut off from their pain medication.
One witness testified during the trial that she heard the gunman call 911 and tell the dispatcher to “send a lot of ambulances. There are a lot of spinal injuries and I have bombs that are about to go off.”
Local law enforcement officials said after the attack that Ulrich was no stranger to them, and was known to have been angry over his medical treatment.
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