Minneapolis woke on Thursday to the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Catholic school in which two children were killed and 17 people injured, stunning the close-knit community and prompting the FBI to investigate the act as domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.
A shooter at the Annunciation Catholic school in the south of the city killed two children, aged eight and 10, in church pews during morning mass. Fourteen other children, aged six to 15, were injured, two of them critically, though officials said they were expected to survive. The shooter killed themself.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping,” the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said. “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.”
He said the incident took place just before 8.30am during a service marking the first week of school. The pews had been packed with teachers, parents and children listening to a psalm. Just before the congregants were to proclaim “Alleluia”, bullets were fired through the windows.
“Down! Everybody down!” someone shouted as children ducked for cover behind wooden pews. One student threw himself on top of a friend and was shot in the back. A youth minister called her husband to say goodbye. People used a wooden plank to barricade a door and fled to a gymnasium.
The shooting went on for several minutes, according to a man who lives near the church and said he heard as many as 50 shots.
Dozens of law enforcement officers soon arrived at the school. Police said the suspect, Robin Westman, 23, was found dead behind the church. Westman’s mother once worked there, but otherwise the shooter had no known connection to the church and no motive has been revealed.
The three injured adults were parishioners in their 80s, officials said.
Many knew each other well in a community that is built around the century-old Catholic school and parish, a suburb better described as a small town.
“I’m just asking [God]: ‘Why right now?’ It’s little kids,” said Aubrey Pannhoff, 16, a student at a nearby Catholic school who stood at the edge of the police cordon.
Pope Leo XIV, who is American, said he was praying for the families of those killed and injured in the “terrible tragedy”.
Westman grew up in Richfield, and applied in Dakota county to change their birth name from Robert to Robin Westman because they identified as a woman, according to court documents obtained by the Guardian. That request was granted in January 2020.
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A rifle, a shotgun and a pistol had been lawfully purchased by the shooter recently, O’Hara said, adding it was believed they acted alone.
He said Westman had scheduled a manifesto to be released on YouTube. The police said it “appeared to show him at the scene and included some disturbing writings”. The content had been taken down with the assistance of the FBI, he added.
The FBI said it was investigating the shooting as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics”.
At a briefing Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said: “Children are dead. There are families that have a deceased child … Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”
Later, Frey added: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said. “We should not be operating from a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of love for our kids. This is about them.”
Associated Press contributed reporting
