FBI director on Annunciation shooting: ‘An act of domestic terrorism’

Officials provided several updates throughout the day Thursday after a transgender mass shooter killed two Catholic school children and injured dozens of others at a Minneapolis church.

City officials say they have identified an additional victim from Wednesday’s shooting at Annunciation Church, bringing the total number of victims to 20.

The shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robert aka Robin Westman, took his own life after he opened fire on Annunciation school children who were attending Mass to mark the first week of school. Two of the children, ages 8 and 10, died.

Fifteen other children, between the ages 6 and 15, were injured. Three adult parishioners attending Mass at the time of the shooting were also injured.

Children’s Minnesota said that three children remained in its Minneapolis hospital for care as of Thursday morning. Four patients were treated and discharged Wednesday.

Hennepin Healthcare said it is caring for nine patients who were injured in the shooting as of Thursday morning. Six are in satisfactory condition. Five of the patients are children. Two patients are in serious condition, one adult and one child. One child is in critical condition.

The Minneapolis Police Department has increased patrols at Annunciation and is working with law enforcement across the metro to expand patrols around all schools in the city over the coming weeks.

New details on shooting 

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Annunciation Church has a practice of locking its doors once Mass begins, which “likely saved additional lives.”

“These children were slaughtered by a shooter who could not see them. He was standing outside of the building, firing through very narrow church windows,” O’Hara said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

O’Hara also confirmed that the shooter previously attended the school, that the shooter’s mother was previously an employee of the parish, and that the shooter changed his name from Robert to Robin.

Court documents show that the shooter’s mother petitioned the court for the name change when her son was 17.

The order granting the request said that, “Minor child identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

While O’Hara said dozens of interviews have been conducted with relatives and associates of the shooter, police “have not been successful in talking to the shooter’s mother yet at this time.” They have talked to the father.

O’Hara said three shotgun shells along with approximately 116 rifle rounds were recovered from the scene. One live round was recovered from a handgun that appears to have malfunctioned when the shooter attempted to use it.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson addressed the manifesto-style videos that the shooter left behind, saying he “expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable.”

“The shooter expressed hate toward black people. The shooter expressed hate toward Mexican people. The shooter expressed hate toward Christian people. The shooter expressed hate towards Jewish people. In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us. The shooter’s heart was full of hate,” said Thompson.

Thompson said the shooter’s hundreds of pages of writings indicate an obsession with school shooters and mass murderers.

“It’s going to be hard to hear, but it’s important to the question of why this happened. More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children, defenseless children,” said Thompson.

“I won’t dignify the shooter’s words by repeating them. They are horrific and vile, but in short, the shooter wanted to watch children suffer.”

According to a New York Post report, the shooter wrote that he “was tired of being trans” and wished he had “never brainwashed” himself.

FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators “have gathered information and evidence demonstrating this was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology.”

In a social media post, Patel noted that the shooter left “anti-Catholic, anti-religious references both in his manifesto and written on his firearms,” and expressed hatred toward Jewish people, “writing ‘Israel must fall,’ ‘Free Palestine,’ and using explicit language related to the Holocaust.”

The shooter also wrote “an explicit call for violence against President Trump on a firearm magazine,” Patel confirmed.

Police have executed search warrants at three residences associated with the shooter. The Catholic Community Foundation has launched a fund to support the victims.

 

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