Untidy property. Police blocked the driveway with an armored vehicle and squad cars. Most of vehicles and debris on the property was Karl Holmberg’s, there to begin with.
Sheriff unsurprised at violent armed resistance
GLENDORADO, Minn. – The man arrested for shooting at police who had surrounded his rural home in a drug raid – and whose bullets struck five of them — was well-known to law enforcement people in the area, said Sheriff Troy Heck. The sheriff identified the man as Karl Thomas Holmberg, 64. This is an exchange from news conference after it was all over:
Reporter: “Have you had any previous interactions with Holmberg?”
Heck: “Yes.”
Reporter: “Were you surprised by the violence and his response?”
Heck: “No.”
Holmberg was taken into custody, ending a four-hour standoff. He had come out of ghe house and was itting shirtless =in a lawn chair. When he rose and began to run, a SWAT team sharpshooter fired a non-lethal projectile. The projectile exploded in a green puff on Holmberg’s torso. He fell. Even before he hit the ground, a police German shepherd K-9 lunged from 20 feet away and took Holmberg down. For Holmberg, the stand-off off was over. Agents rushed in on the K-9’s trail. Without resistance, Holmberg was led to a bench, where he sat to regain his equilibrium, then was placed on a stretcher and moved to a med-evac helicopter. He was flown 60 miles to a hospital in the Twin Cities for examination. His medical state wasn’t known immediately although he was ambulatory. albeit wobbly, when arrested. Police arrested woman in the home. She was transported to a hospital for evaluation.
Holmberg. In a 2022 mug shot from the Benton County jail. Court records show Holmberg was convicted of cocaine possession in 1986 and another felony drug possession in 2006. In 2019 he was convicted of a petty misdemeanor for not wearing his seatbelt in a vehicle.
Heck. Benton County sheriff since 2014.