1982 Brownburg, Dakota shootings (Alternity)

The 1982 Brownburg, Dakota shootings were a series of attacks perpetrated by anti-government militia on the small Dakota town of Brownburg in Washabaugh County in February 1982. In the early morning of February 13, beginning around 7:45 a.m. MST, a group of nine militiamen armed with automatic assault weapons stormed a branch of the Dakota State Bank and took eight hostages, one of whom was an undercover police detective. After only an hour, the seemingly impatient militiamen executed all eight of the hostages in cold blood, including the police detective, and fled the bank through a neighboring building, killing two Dakota State Troopers upon exiting. An hour later, the militia stormed a local daycare center (because it had received funds from the government), brutally gunned down three teachers, and vandalized the building before fleeing yet again. Finally, not ten minutes later, they entered a local construction site where a medical clinic was being built and shot five construction workers before forcing the rest off the property. Within five minutes, Brownburg PD, Dakota State Troopers, and FBI SWAT were on scene, surrounding the site and demanding the immediate surrender of the militia group - they blatantly refused to do so. Expecting such a response, the FBI called in a pair of UH-1 Huey gunships, which arrived none too soon as the militia engaged with and killed four more State Troopers, as well as wounding another dozen Brownburg PD and FBI. At 10:49 a.m. five of the militia surrendered, finally realizing they were outgunned. The remaining four engaged the Hueys with disastrous results: two of them died outright and within twenty seconds, while the other two were wounded, but decided to surrender after five minutes of constant cannon fire from the helicopters. All told when it was over, seventeen civilians and six State Troopers were dead, another twenty-five injured to varying degrees. The shootings were condemned by the national government and much of the civilian populace alike as an unnecessary act of terror. President Ronald Reagan visited Brownburg on February 15 to pay respects to the victims and their families, and in a brief speech at memorial services called it a "...brutal and barbaric attack on innocent American citizens...". The Brownburg attacks inaugurated a new era of domestic 'terrorism', with countless militia groups cropping up in cities and towns around the United States within the next ten years.