Wrestling legend Verne Gagne, who climbed to fame as a likeable giant of the ring and helped launch Hulk Hogan and former Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura to stardom, is under police investigation in the death of a fellow resident at a Bloomington care facility.

Gagne, 82, threw Helmut R. Gutmann, 97, to the floor Jan. 26, breaking his hip and injuring his head, according to Gutmann’s family. Gutmann, an accomplished cancer researcher and violinist who fled Nazi Germany in 1936, was treated for his injuries but later was hospitalized again. He died Saturday.

Gutmann’s daughter, Ruth Hennig, said the two men had been in a public lobby of the Friendship Village memory loss unit, near the nurse’s station, when Gagne grabbed her father.

“I don’t know what precipitated the attack, if anything,” Hennig said. “All I know is that Verne Gagne lifted my father off the floor and then threw him down to the ground, and that caused him to crack his hip.”

Police were not called to the facility after Gutmann’s fall. But Bloomington Police Deputy Chief Perry Heles said his department opened an investigation into an incident at Friendship Village after being contacted by an adult-protection agency. He said he could not elaborate on details because there have been no arrests and no complaint.

Gagne suffers from Alzheimer’s, while Gutmann, who could recognize his wife and children but not his grandchildren, suffered from dementia and short-term memory loss, said Hennig, executive director of a charitable trust in Boston.

She said Gagne had pushed her father in a previous incident, but there were no injuries.

“I don’t blame him, in the sense that I know he’s not fully responsible for what he did,” Hennig said. “But on the other hand, I know that my father would still be alive today if they hadn’t had this altercation. … I’m more sad than I am angry.”

Gutmann’s wife, Betty Gutmann, who declined to comment, resides in an independent living area at Friendship Village. Kay Miller, a spokeswoman for Life Care Retirement Communities Inc., which runs the facility, said she could not comment because of federal rules governing patient confidentiality.

Gagne’s son, Greg Gagne, described the incident as a terrible accident. He referred all other questions to the family attorney, Julian Hook, who did not return calls.

Verne Gagne and his wife could not be reached for comment.

A native of Robbinsdale, Gagne sidestepped opportunities to play professional football in the 1950s after graduating from the University of Minnesota. He instead became an alternate for the U.S. Olympic wrestling team and then a longtime presence in professional wrestling circles.

In 1960, he formed the American Wrestling Association with a stable that eventually included Hogan and Ventura. With Gagne as sole owner, the association toured civic centers and dominated televised wrestling in the 1960s and ’70s.

He became known as one of the more extroverted and approachable figures of professional wrestling, a self-made superstar who rose from poverty. His mother died when he was 14, and he lived in a hotel during his senior year in high school, supporting himself by mopping floors at a beauty salon.

“He had nothing when we were married,” his wife, Mary Gagne, told the Pioneer Press in 1981.

By the 1980s, his Minneapolis-based wrestling circuit had franchises in Hawaii, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Omaha, Neb., as well as Toronto and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

He retired from the ring in 1981, reportedly a millionaire, but struggled to keep the company afloat. Gagne and the American Wrestling Association filed for bankruptcy in 1991.

Hennig said her father received excellent care at Friendship Village, where had lived in the memory care unit for two years. Gutmann, who was Jewish, left Nazi Germany and made a name for himself in Minnesota as a scientist and musician.

Gutmann served as a captain in the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service, according to his family, and spent 40 years as a research scientist at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis. He taught at the University of Minnesota, and his cancer research led to the publication of 120 papers in professional journals.

His daughter said he played violin for 12 years with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, and when he no longer could hold the strings correctly, he switched to piano.

Before his fall, he had been scheduled to play piano last month at the Minnesota Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bloomington, which he helped found in 1966, the Rev. Don Rollins said.

“At 97, he lived a really good long life,” Hennig said. “He was, on the whole, healthy for most of it. But it was a shock and regrettable that his life came to an end in the way that it did. He was in pain, and he was extremely disoriented while he was in the hospital.”

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.