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Slain Minnesota lawmaker’s dog, Gilbert, lies in state with owners

Minnesota is honoring the golden retriever named Gilbert belonging to a prominent state lawmaker and her husband who were shot to death in their home. The dog, who also was shot, will lie in state with them at the state Capitol.

Gilbert was home with Democratic leader and Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband when a gunman fatally shot the couple and mortally wounded their beloved dog. And he was with them again Friday when the Hortmans lay in state at the Capitol in St. Paul.

He is all but certainly the first dog to receive the honor, having been put down after being badly injured in the attack. There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Hundreds of people waited outside the Capitol before they were allowed into the rotunda at noon, with the line to pay respects snaking out of the building and along an adjacent street. The Hortmans’ caskets were decorated with flowers and folded U.S. and Minnesota flags. Two pedestals sat between them, one for an arrangement of flowers and the other, for the gold-colored urn holding Gilbert’s remains.

Gilbert has received a flood tributes like Hortman and her husband, Mark, ever since news spread online that he had been shot, too, in the attack early on the morning of June 14 by a man posing as a police officer. The accused assassin, Vance Boelter, is also charged with shooting a prominent Democratic state senator and his wife, and authorities say Boelter visited two other Democratic lawmakers’ homes without encountering them.

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