During prayer time at a Minneapolis Catholic school on Aug. 27, an armed aggressor entered the campus dressed in all black and opened fire on the walls of a church. The shooter, now identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, fired multiple rounds, injuring 17 people (14 children) and killing two children (aged 8 and 10).
The attack occurred Wednesday morning at Annunciation Catholic School where the students were partaking in a morning service during their first week back at school. Once the shooter had stopped attacking the unsuspecting students and parishioners he turned the gun on himself and died on the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The shooter, the aforementioned Westman, changed his name from Robert to Robin in 2020, identifying as a female and wanting her name to reflect that. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed back against the anti-transgender speech publicized by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who said that Westman was a “male, claiming to be transgender.” It appears that in Westman’s journals, he recently de-transitioned and completely red-pilled, coming to denounce the queer community.
Westman also had a YouTube profile, where he published videos that included his own notebook sketches and jot-downs. One page was titled “Annunciation from memory”, which included a rough sketch of the school and the layout of the church. In the video, Westman shows the drawing, then stabs it with a knife.
There are other notes dated back to July that say “things are moving swiftly into place” and that the suspect is “feeling good about Annunciation”. He believed that it was a “good combo of easy attack for [him] and devastating tragedy” for everyone else. There were also several guns, bullets, and magazines filmed in the room with Westman. They said things like “Where is your God?”, contained racial and ethnic slurs, and there were even tear gas bombs with “Jew gas” written on them.
The critical victims were taken to Hennepin Medical Center and were treated in the emergency department. Officials say that all injured victims are expected to survive their injuries. A 10-year-old survivor shared with reporters that he was close to stained glass windows but was saved by his friend Victor, who laid on top of him. Victor, reportedly, was shot in the back but is expected to recover in the hospital.
The FBI is now investigating the shooting as an anti-Catholic hate crime, though there is no official motive for the crime.
“The FBI is investigating this shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics,” FBI Director Kash Patel shared in a post on X.
Pope Leo XIV, the first American Catholic Pope, shared that he is “profoundly saddened by the attack”. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara reported: “This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping.”
An event like this is testament to the state of the United States–within the first week of school a mass shooting was carried out, taking two lives and severely altering 17 others.
