A shooter opened fire Wednesday morning during Mass at a Minneapolis Catholic school, killing two children and injuring 17 other people before dying by suicide, officials said.
Police said 14 of the injured were children, with their ages ranging from 6 to 15, and they are all expected to survive. The three adults who were injured are parishioners in their 80s, officials said.
The shooting happened at Annunciation Catholic School, just days after the first day of school on Monday.
“It’s my strongest desire that no state, no community, no school ever experiences a day like this,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said.
The White House said in a social media post that Trump ordered flags at half-staff for all government buildings until sunset on Sunday “as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence.”
**The location**: Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooter — armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol — approached the side of the church and shot through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews during Mass.
The shooter: O’Hara identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, adding that Westman had no prior criminal history and is believed to have acted alone, law enforcement reported. O’Hara said authorities are going through online videos attributed to Westman, posted around the time of the shooting. The content has now been taken down.
The school: Founded in 1923, Annunciation Catholic School had 391 students enrolled for the 2023-24 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The school goes from pre-K to eighth grade.
One of my wife’s friends (not mine, I don’t really like them, especially the wife because she’s the stereotype of a Catholic wife and mother like Jesus …to a ‘t’…and I get the impression that behind closed doors, the husband takes the Irish-Catholic Husband role very seriously) sends their kids to Catholic school.
Their oldest, though, is awesome. Wicked smart kid, awesome imagination. I think he may be a bit on the spectrum. The type of kid that, at a party, will have more fun talking to the parents than playing with the kids.
Anyway I feel bad for this kid because despite being super smart and having an awesome imagination, these great conversations get punctuated by Catholic fables and he treats that as equal fact.
I really want to be a part of this kids eventual atheist-awakening. It’s bound to happen, he’s far too logical and skeptical. But I really worry about how this kid will fare if it doesn’t, and what it will mean for his family ties when it does.
I went to Catholic school and recently saw like eight former classmates at a friend’s wedding. The bride is Catholic, but none of the rest of us are. I was an out atheist in school, but the rest of them were ostensibly religious then (~15 years ago). Half of us are now queer and fucking nobody supports jd Vance. Even the catholic one isn’t a religious fanatic. She keeps her faith mostly private and married a divorced father.
This kid will probably also become less religious over time (or suddenly). I think Catholicism is a little easier to break free from than Lutheranism or Episcopalianism, because of transubstantiation. Once he realizes that people expect him to literally think the host is Jesus’ actual, real, material flesh, it’s kind of hard to believe it.
I stopped believing in god at four years old because I realized everyone else in my Sunday school class believed the story about Jonah and the whale. Catholics often give the Old Testament a little wiggle room, but transubstantiation is absolutely core to Catholicism.