What we know about the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting

Two children were killed and at least 17 people were injured after an assailant shot through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. Children from the adjacent Annunciation Catholic School were attending Mass at the time of the attack. The shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attack marked the first school shooting in the nation since the end of summer break and renewed anguish for Minneapolis residents. Two months earlier, a gunman fatally shot state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband inside their home north of the city and injured a state senator and his wife at their home a few miles away.

Here’s what we know about the Annunciation shooting.

According to Minneapolis Police, a gunman fired through the windows of the Annunciation Church at worshippers sitting in pews during a Catholic school Mass, killing two children and injuring at least 17 others. Photo / Getty Images

‘Dozens’ of rounds were fired into the church.

The attack began about 8.30am local time, minutes after the first Mass of the new school year had begun. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the assailant fired through the windows of the church using a rifle, shotgun and pistol – estimating that “dozens” of rounds had been fired.

The shooting took place steps away from the church’s affiliated school, in which students from preschool through eighth grade are enrolled. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on Wednesday evening at a vigil that teachers and faculty “threw their bodies on top of children” to protect them from gunshots.

Shooter legally purchased guns, did not have criminal history.

Police said the 23-year-old assailant, whom they identified as Robin Westman, acted alone and did not have a criminal history.

Westman timed videos to be posted on YouTube to coincide with the attack, authorities said. Those videos have been taken down, though archived copies are still circulating online. They do not describe a clear motive for the attacks.

One video showed multiple firearms and gun magazines scrawled with messages such as “Kill Donald Trump” and slurs including anti-black, antisemitic, anti-Hispanic and anti-God slogans and sayings. The names of previous mass shooters were also written on the weapons and magazines. The video also contained messages of apology to family members and references to depressive and suicidal thoughts.

Westman had a “deranged obsession with previous active shooters and mass shootings”, O’Hara told MSNBC Thursday. The police chief added that based on what investigators have found so far, the shooter harboured “a whole lot of hate for a whole wide variety of people” and was “obsessed with causing as much trauma and violence and possible”.

Flowers, candles and mementos are left as part of a memorial at Lyndale Ave S and W 54th St, near Annunciation Catholic Church and Annunciation Catholic School. Photo / Getty Images

Officials also confirmed that the shooter had legally purchased the guns used in the killings.

Court documents show that Westman’s name was legally changed from Robert to Robin in 2020, after the assailant’s mother filed an application on behalf of her child. The court order reads that Westman, then a teenager, “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification”, Dakota County court records show.

According to posts on social media, Mary Westman, the shooter’s mother, retired from an administrative job at the Annunciation church in 2021. O’Hara said on Thursday on NBC’s Today show that Mary Westman worked for the parish and that police believe the shooter had been a student at the school and member of the church in the past.

Community members gathered at Lynnhurst Park in Minneapolis for a candlelight vigil for the victims and survivors of the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Photo / Getty Images

Two children were killed and 17 people were injured.

Two children – an 8-year-old and 10-year-old – were “killed where they sat in the pews”, O’Hara said. Of the 17 injured, 14 were children, with three elderly parishioners also sustaining wounds.

All the victims injured in the attack are expected to survive and have been reunited with family members, O’Hara said.

The school’s principal, Matthew DeBoer, called the teachers “heroes” for shielding their students from fire. Students, too, scrambled to protect their classmates, he said in a Wednesday afternoon news conference.

Children and at least one adult with a range of injuries were taken to three hospitals, some in critical condition. Several underwent surgery into the afternoon, officials said, but all were expected to live.

Members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) speak to a resident following a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School. Photo / Getty Images

FBI investigating shooting as ‘hate crime targeting Catholics’.

The FBI is investigating the shooting as an “act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics”, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. Authorities are examining evidence, including videos posted by Westman, as they try to identify a motive.

Police also said they had recovered other firearms after executing search warrants at residences for Westman in the Minneapolis area.

Minnesota has strict firearm laws, ‘relatively low’ gun violence

Minnesota is home to some of the toughest firearm laws in the country, and the state has “relatively low firearm violence”, with a gun death rate – the number of people who die from gun violence for every 100,000 residents in a given population – of 8.9, below the national average of 13.7, according to the gun-control organisation Everytown for Gun Safety.

Still, after the Annunciation shooting, advocates said more must be done to prevent both high-profile mass shootings and the gun violence that unfolds every day, away from the spotlight. One day earlier, on Tuesday, a person was killed and six others were injured when a shooter armed with a high-velocity rifle opened fire on a group of people across the street from another Minneapolis school, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, in what O’Hara called a “deeply troubling act of violence”.

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