The calm of a rich dead end, north of Minneapolis, was broken.
A yellow band, establishing a police cordon, the brand now as the theater of A double murder.
The former speaker of the State, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark were slaughtered in their own house in the early hours of Saturday.
The gardens on this street are impeccably maintained, but John Sampson takes care of his, perhaps a distraction tactic.
He knew the murdered couple well. Her daughter was their baby-sitter.
“Very nice, very similar, very intelligent,” he recalls.
From Ms. Hortman, he said: “She would know other people who were on the other side of the aisle, but that didn’t matter for her.
“Politics has never been brought to the neighborhood.”
Pic: Reuters
Other neighbors remained behind closed doors, where they had initially received the order to shelter after two attacks of firearms.
The longtime state senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette had been shot in their house.
The police sent to check her colleague Democrat, Melissa Hortman, were too late.
They met a man disguised as a police officer leaving his house and exchanged fire with him, but he escaped, triggering a man hunt.
Investigators move from the debris from Melissa Hortman’s house and her husband, Mark. Pic: AP
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who showed up for the vice-president last year, described murders as “motivated by politics”.
This is something that residents of this network of suburban streets find it difficult to understand.
“At the national level and everything, things are very volatile in the political scene and I pray just so that it is not there,” said John Sampson.
“I hoped that it would never happen here, that anyone must go through this type of tragedy.”
“I feel very sad for children and for the family left behind,” he added.
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Representative of the state of Minnesota, Melissa Hortman (L) and Senator John Hoffman. Pic: Facebook / minnesota legislative assembly
Ms. Hortman was a democrat but voted with the Republicans last Thursday to obtain a budget bill.
The compromise was painful for herself – retain free health care from undocumented migrants.
Speaking later, she explained in tears: “I know that people will be injured by this vote, and we worked very hard to obtain a budgetary agreement which would not include this provision.”
Whatever the motivation of the murders of the politician and her husband, two children lost their two parents.
And armed violence has made more lives in a deeply polarized America.