MINNEAPOLIS: The shooter who killed two Catholic school students and wounded more than a dozen youngsters sitting in the pews of a Minneapolis church once attended the same school and was “obsessed” with the idea of killing children, authorities said Thursday.
The shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, fired 116 rifle rounds through stained-glass windows while the children celebrated Mass during the first week of classes at the Annunciation Catholic School, said Minneapolis police Chief Brian O’Hara.
“It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorize those innocent children,” O’Hara said.
Acting US Attorney Joe Thompson said videos and writings the shooter left behind show that the shooter “expressed hate toward almost every group imaginable.”
The only group Westman did not hate was “mass murderers,” Thompson said. “In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us.”
Investigators recovered hundreds of pieces of evidence from the church and three residences, the police chief said. They found more writings from the suspect, but no additional firearms or a clear motive for the attack on the church the shooter once attended. Westman had a “deranged fascination” with mass killings, O’Hara said.
“No evidence will ever be able to make sense of such an unthinkable tragedy,” he said.
Surveillance video captured the attack and showed the shooter never entered the church and could not see the children while firing through windows lined up with the pews, the police chief said.
A grieving father speaks
Family members identified one of the victims as 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel, describing him as a boy who loved his family, fishing, cooking, and any sport he was allowed to play.
“We will never be allowed to hold him, talk to him, play with him and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming,” his father, Jesse, said while tearfully reading a statement outside the church on Thursday.
A 10-year-old was also killed. City officials on Thursday increased to 15 the number of wounded children — ages 6 to 15 — in addition to three parishioners in their 80s who were also injured. Most were expected to survive, O’Hara said.
One child was in critical condition Thursday while 11 other victims remained in hospitals.
Westman, whose mother worked for the parish before retiring in 2021, left behind several videos and page upon page of writings describing a litany of grievances. One read: “I know this is wrong, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
O’Hara said Westman was armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol, and died by suicide.
On a YouTube channel, videos that police say may have been posted by the shooter show weapons and ammunition, and list the names of mass shooters. What appears to be a suicide note to family contains a confession of long-held plans to carry out a shooting and talk of being deeply depressed.
Student shielded by a friend who was shot
Rev. Dennis Zehren, who was inside the church with the nearly 200 children, said the responsorial psalm — which spoke of light in the darkness — had almost ended when he heard someone yell, “Down down, everybody down,” and gunshots rang out.
Fifth-grader Weston Halsne said he ducked for the pews, covering his head, shielded by a friend who was on top of him. His friend was hit, he said.
“I was super scared for him, but I think now he’s OK,” the 10-year-old said.
Authorities try to determine a motive
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the attack was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by hate-filled ideology, citing the shooter’s statements against multiple religions and calls for violence against President Donald Trump.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday sent state law enforcement officers to schools and churches in Minneapolis, saying no child should go to school worried about losing a classmate or gunshots erupting during prayer.
On a YouTube channel titled Robin W, the person filming the video points to two windows in what appears to be a drawing of the church, then stabs it with a long knife.
The now-deleted videos also show weapons and ammunition, scrawled with “kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” along with the names of past mass shooters.
There also were hundreds of pages written in Cyrillic, a centuries-old script still used in Slavic countries. In one, Westman wrote, “When will it end?”
Lily Kletter, who graduated from Annunciation, recalled that Westman joined her class at some point in middle school and once hid in the bathroom to avoid going to Mass.
“I remember they had a crazy distaste for school, especially Annunciation, which I always thought was pretty interesting because their mom was on the parish board,” she said.
Federal officials referred to Westman as transgender, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey decried hatred being directed at “our transgender community.” Westman’s gender identity wasn’t clear. In 2020, a judge approved a petition, signed by Westman’s mother, asking for a name change from Robert to Robin, saying the petitioner “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
No criminal record
There were no past arrests or anything in the shooter’s background that would have prevented Westman from being able to legally purchase a firearm, investigators said Thursday.
In response to a request for any records of police contact with the shooter in the last decade, the Eagen Police department sent two documents, both heavily redacted. The first from 2018 is listed as a mental health call and welfare check for a child with parents Mary Grace Westman and James Westman. The case was listed as closed and the narrative was redacted after the officer wrote she responded to the woman’s address.
A second report from 2016 involving a criminal complaint was entirely redacted.
Police chief says officers rescued children who hid
The police chief said the first officer ran into the church four minutes after the initial 911 call and that more officers rendered first aid and rescued some of the children.
Annunciation’s principal Matt DeBoer said teachers and children alike responded heroically.
“Children were ducked down. Adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children,” he said.
Vincent Francoual said his 11-year-old daughter, Chloe, survived by running downstairs and hiding in a room with a table pushed against the door. He said she is struggling to communicate clearly about the traumatizing scene and that she thought she was going to die.
Tess Rada said her 8-year-old daughter also hasn’t said much about the shooting so she too doesn’t know exactly what she saw. Loud noises and sirens have bothered her since the attack, Rada said.
One of the children killed was her daughter’s friend.
“It’s kind of impossible,” Rada said “to wrap your head around how to tell an 8-year-old that her friend has been killed.”

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan: When he was a teenager, Bekmurad Khodjayev used to hide from his parents to smoke. Fifty years later, the Turkmen pensioner is still hiding, but this time from the police.
“I smoke in my apartment. But if I feel like smoking in town, I find a place without surveillance cameras to avoid a fine — an alleyway, a dead end, behind some tall bushes or trees, a deserted spot,” the 64-year-old builder told AFP.
The Central Asian state of seven million people, where the rate of smoking is already very low, has vowed to eradicate the habit altogether by the end of the year.
Khodjayev said he had already been fined for smoking near his home.
“Since then, I try not to get caught anymore,” he said.
The target of going tobacco-free was set in 2022 by the country’s supreme leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist.
Only four percent of Turkmens smoke, according to the World Health Organization.
There are heavy taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and smoking in almost all public places is now banned.
Khodjayev said he buys cigarettes at private kiosks since state shops run by the ministry of commerce do not have them.
In his kiosk in the capital Ashgabat, seller Meilis said the cigarettes came from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Iran.
“Most of the time, I sell single ones. Not everyone can afford an entire pack, it’s too expensive,” the 21-year-old told AFP.

Active fight against tobacco”

According to several smokers in Turkmenistan, a pack can cost between 50 and 170 manats ($14.20 to $48.50), while individual cigarettes cost between two and five manats.
A pack can set you back more than a tenth of the average monthly salary, which was roughly 1,500 manats in 2018, according to the most recent official Turkmen statistics.
Comparisons with other countries are complicated because of the double exchange rate in Turkmenistan — an official one controlled by the state and the real one which operates on the black market.
In a hospital in Ashgabat, Soltan, a doctor, welcomed the government’s “active fight against tobacco.”
“We treat tobacco addiction. The health ministry has created centers where smokers can get free advice on quitting,” she said.
The authorities rely on more coercive methods with a variety of smoking bans, import restrictions and fines that can reach 200 manats.
“After receiving several fines, I decided to stop definitively after the time I got caught smoking in my car in a public car park,” said Ilyas Byashimov, a 24-year-old entrepreneur.

“No compromise”
The Berdymukhamedovs — Gurbanguly and his son Serdar — have ruled the country for almost 20 years with almost absolute power.
After Serdar Berdymukhamedov called in 2023 for a “no compromise” fight against smoking, around 20 people were shown on state television promising not to smoke water pipes or import tobacco illegally.
There are also regular public burnings of contraband cigarettes, accompanied by shows of traditional Turkmen dancing and singing.
With just a few months to go until the end of 2025, the authorities are not claiming victory in rooting out smoking.
Contacted by AFP, the health ministry declined to reply — not surprising in a country where obtaining and verifying any official information is extremely hard.
Smokers seemed doubtful about a total ban.
“Cigarettes will not disappear completely but will become much more expensive and there will be a black market,” said Haidar Shikhiev, 60, a builder.
Seller Galina Soyunova said that cigarettes “will always be available under the counter but even more expensive.”
“Who will buy cigarettes for the price of gold? Nobody. The question of tobacco addiction will resolve itself,” she said.
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