As Minneapolis grappled with the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Catholic school church in which two children were killed and 17 people injured, police said “countless lives” had been saved by the church doors being locked as the shooter had not been able to get inside.
Two children, aged eight and 10, were killed in the church pews during morning mass at the Annunciation Catholic school church. Fourteen other children, aged six to 15, were also injured, two of them critically, though officials said they were expected to survive. Three adults, parishioners in their 80s, were also injured. Police said the suspected, Robin Westman, 23, killed themself and was found dead behind the church.
The shooter had tried to get inside the church to carry out the attack, but failed as the doors had been locked when mass began, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told NBC’s Today show on Thursday morning. As a result, they had fired through the windows, and the fact that they couldn’t get into the church “likely saved countless lives”, O’Hara said.
Online posts indicate that Westman’s mother worked at the church in the south of the city until 2021. O’Hara, told Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP that his office believes Westman had been a student at Annunciation.
Related: Minneapolis Catholic school shooting: two children killed and 17 injured
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping,”O’Hara said in a news conference on Wednesday. “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.
Department of Homeland ecurity secretary Kristi Noem called Westman a “deranged monster” in a statement later on Wednesday.
“This level of violence is unthinkable. Our deepest prayers are with the children, parents, families, educators, and Christians everywhere. We mourn with them, we pray for healing, and we will never forget them,” Noem said.
He said the incident took place just before 8.30am during a service marking the first week of school. The pews had been packed with teachers, parents and children listening to a psalm. Just before the congregants were to proclaim “Alleluia”, bullets were fired through the windows.
“Down! Everybody down!” someone shouted as children ducked for cover behind wooden pews. One student threw himself on top of a friend and was shot in the back. A youth minister called her husband to say goodbye. People used a wooden plank to barricade a door and fled to a gymnasium.
The shooting went on for several minutes, according to a man who lives near the church and said he heard as many as 50 shots. Dozens of law enforcement officers soon arrived at the school.
Many knew each other well in a community that is built around the century-old Catholic school and parish, a suburb better described as a small town.
“I’m just asking [God]: ‘Why right now?’ It’s little kids,” said Aubrey Pannhoff, 16, a student at a nearby Catholic school who stood at the edge of the police cordon.
Pope Leo XIV, who is American, said he was praying for the families of those killed and injured in the “terrible tragedy”.
Westman grew up in Richfield, and applied in Dakota county to change their birth name from Robert to Robin Westman because they identified as a woman, according to court documents obtained by the Guardian. That request was granted in January 2020.
A rifle, a shotgun and a pistol had been lawfully bought by the shooter recently, O’Hara said, adding it was believed they acted alone.
He said Westman had scheduled a manifesto to be released on YouTube. The police said it “appeared to show him at the scene and included some disturbing writings”. The content had been taken down with the assistance of the FBI, he added. The videos were rambling, often showed writings in Russian, and contained a variety of references to things ranging from Donald Trump to antisemitic statements to gun rights.
As police continue to search for a potential motive, O’Hara said on Thursday that investigators were trying to obtain electronic search warrants to go through the shooter’s devices. “Everything that we’ve seen so far is really a classic pathway to an active shooter,” he told NBC’s Today show, but nothing specific had emerged yet in terms of motive for targeting this particular church.
The FBI said it was investigating the shooting as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics”, but O’Hara declined to be drawn on the motive at news conference on Wednesday, restating only that investigations into a motive were ongoing.
At a briefing, Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said: “Children are dead. There are families that have a deceased child … Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”
Later, Frey added: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community has lost their sense of common humanity,” he said. “We should not be operating from a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of love for our kids. This is about them.”
One of the documented victims in the shooting is 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, who “was shot during the attack and is currently in critical condition in the ICU”, per a GoFundMe that was set up for family to help with “ongoing ICU care, future surgeries, trauma counseling, lost income, travel, and the countless unknowns that lie ahead”.
The GoFundMe notes that Forchas’s younger brother was also inside the school during the shooting and her mother, a pediatric critical care nurse, went to work to help during the tragedy, not knowing her daughter was critically injured.
Associated Press contributed reporting