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Adult store owner takes hostages, killed by police

A man who had fought with county officials for years over his adult businesses walked into a board meeting with a gun on Tuesday and held about 10 people hostage before law-enforcement officers fatally shot him, authorities said.

A few people managed to escape the county commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday morning after Gordon Wheeler Sr pulled out a handgun, said Dave Bjerga, assistant superintendent for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

They called the Morrison County sheriff’s office and a few minutes later, Sheriff Michel Wetzel, a deputy and a state trooper fired on Wheeler, Bjerga said. The 60-year-old was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

No one else was injured and it was not clear whether Wheeler fired his gun, Bjerga said. An autopsy was set for yesterday.

“He came in and interrupted a regularly scheduled board meeting,” Bjerga said. “We’re still interviewing people in the room to find out what exactly happened.”

Bjerga said that although Wheeler had had several conflicts over the years with officials in rural Morrison County, about 160km northwest of Minneapolis, investigators did not know what Wheeler’s motive was.

Wheeler had owned a few adult businesses in the county that have since closed. The county in 2003 made its land-use ordinance for sex-related businesses stricter and then moved to shut down an adult book and video store Wheeler owned, the St Cloud Times said.
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