Shooter Kills Two Children At a Church in Minneapolis

Fourteen pupils from Catholic school are among the injured; suspect died at scene 

MINNEAPOLIS—Two children were killed and 17 other people were injured when a shooter opened fire during Mass at a church adjoining the Annunciation Catholic School, according to authorities.

The children, ages 8 and 10, were shot and killed at the Annunciation Church, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. Seventeen others were injured, 14 of whom were children. Two of the children were in critical condition. The shooting took place just before 8:30 a.m. local time during a Mass marking the first week of school. P.J. Mudd, a utility manager, said he heard “boom, boom, boom,” through his open window. “It suddenly dawned on me. 

It was a shooting,” the 49- year-old said. A block away, 23-year-old Robin Westman had opened fire at the church adjoining the school. The shooting began as the priest finished the processional and as congregants were finishing the opening song, according to a father who attended the Mass with his second-grader. Westman approached the side of the building and fired dozens of shots through the church windows, police said. 

The suspect was armed with a rifle, shotgun and a pistol, all recently purchased legally. O’Hara said pieces of wood had been placed outside at least two doors on the side of the church where the shooter approached. “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara said.

The father who was at the Mass said there was silence as the shots rang out. He recalled no screaming as kids hid underneath the pews and the principal attempted to lock doors. “You could hear a pin drop outside of the gunshots,” he said. “Everybody was just dead quiet.”

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