Burnsville, Minnesota – The wife of one of the three first responders killed by a Minnesota gunman during a multi-hour armed standoff early Sunday said she knew immediately that her husband was dead when a police cruiser pulled up to the family home later that morning.
Cindy Elmstrand-Castruita said she is heartbroken after Burnsville officer Paul Elmstrand – her high school sweetheart and father of her two children, a 2-year-old and 5-month-old – was slain along with a fellow officer and a paramedic as they responded to an active shooter who had barricaded himself in his house with his family.
The grieving widow said she initially had no idea what happened to her husband during Sunday’s shooting, and was puzzled over an early morning text she got from a friend saying they were sorry for what she was going through.
Although she initially chalked it up as a mistake, she said she knew what was coming when a police car pulled up in front of her home. “I looked out my bedroom window and saw a squad car out there,” she told the outlet. “I knew. That’s when I knew he was gone.”
Elmstrand-Castruita said she was proud of Paul, 27, and knew that he likely did everything he could during Sunday’s incident to protect the kids caught up in the standoff.
The shooter, who has yet to be publicly identified, had holed himself up along with a woman and seven children between the ages of 2 and 15, police said.
“I think he just had to be the hero. He had to do what he thought was right to protect those little lives even if it meant putting his at risk,” Elmstrand-Castruita said, “and it breaks my heart because now he’s gone. But I know that he thought what he did was right.”
Paul and Ruge were the fifth and sixth officers in the US killed by gunfire so far this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which records instances of fallen cops.