Minneapolis Police Respond to Shooting that Erupted at Church

MINNEAPOLIS — Two children were killed in a shooting Wednesday at Annunciation Church in south Minneapolis, police said, and 17 people were injured, 14 of them children. Two are in critical condition. The suspected shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene, according to police.

The shooter attacked while the students were in the first Mass of the school year. Mayor Jacob Frey decried the “horrific violence in south Minneapolis,” which prompted a huge law enforcement response surrounding the area.

Two sources familiar with the investigation into the shooting at Annunciation Church said Westman, 23, of Richfield, is the suspected shooter.

According to court records, Westman’s mother applied to change her child’s name in 2019 from Robert Paul Westman to Robin M. Westman in Dakota County because she identified as a female. Because Westman was a minor at the time, her mother had to sign off on the change. According to the application, Westman “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

Public records show Westman’s father, James Westman, owns a home in south Minneapolis, less than one mile from Annunciation. Police were stationed outside the home, which was cordoned off with crime scene tape.

Westman’s mother answered a cellphone call crying but told a Star Tribune reporter she did not know if her child was the shooter.

One source told the Star Tribune that Westman’s mother once worked at Annunciation. The church said in 2021 that Westman’s mother provided “wonderful hospitality” in a Facebook post announcing her departure.

Noting the closeknit ties of families in Minneapolis, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said so many residents of the city have ties to Annunciation Catholic. Klobuchar heard from a former staffer whose children attend the school and who knows children wounded in the morning’s gun violence.

“One of the things that people nationally don’t understand is that this school is enmeshed in our community,” Klobuchar said. “There’s shops, people. There’s a neighborhood. And that whole community suffers.”

Klobuchar said mass shootings have left a “trail of tears” across America, invoking gunman attacks on schools in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adult staff were killed.

Renee Lego, an Annunciation parishioner who has a fifth grader and an eighth grader at Annunciation Catholic School, said her older son thought it was fireworks or a gas explosion until he started to see people falling.

“Both my kids have blood on them,” she said Wednesday morning. “It’s just horrific — so cowardly. This person knew this was our first all-school Mass of the year. It was obviously planned. This is the children’s Mass, not an advertised Mass for the public.”

Lego got a call from another parent and drove straight to the school, where terrified parents were gathering. “I got as close as I could and kept trying to get ahold of my kids — I didn’t know if my kids were alive or not,” she said. “We have a friend whose son is unaccounted for right now. We don’t know what that means."

Dr. Thomas Wyatt, chair of emergency medicine for Hennepin Healthcare, said 11 people were brought to HCMC this morning. Of them, he said two were adults and nine were children. Of the 11, seven were in critical condition. He said four of the 11 required an operating room. He said the emergency room staff received the first page alerting them to a mass casualty event at 8:46 a.m., the second mass casualty alert they had received within 24 hours.

Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara gave additional details about the deadly shooting.

“During the Mass, the gunman approached on the outside, on the side of the building, and began firing a rifle through the church windows towards the children sitting in the pews at the Mass. Shooting through the windows, he struck children and worshippers that were inside the building.”

The shooter was armed with a rifle, shotgun and a pistol and died of a self-inflicted gunshot in the rear of the church, O’Hara said. Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed in the pews. Seventeen people were injured, 14 of them children. Two are in critical condition.

“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping” O’Hara said.

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