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MINNEAPOLIS: A shooter opened fire with a rifle Wednesday through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis and struck children celebrating Mass during the first week of school, killing two and wounding 17 people in an act of violence the police chief called “absolutely incomprehensible.”
Armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol, 23-year-old Robin Westman approached the side of the church and shot dozens of rounds through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School just before 8:30 a.m., Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at news conferences. He said the shooter then died by suicide.
The children who died were 8 and 10. Fourteen other kids and three octogenarian parishioners were wounded but expected to survive, the chief said.
Fifth-grader Weston Halsne told reporters he ducked for the pews, covering his head, shielded by a friend who was lying on top of him. His friend was hit, he said.

“I was super scared for him, but I think now he’s okay,” the 10-year-old said, adding that he was praying for the other hospitalized children and adults.
Halsne’s grandfather, Michael Simpson, said the violence during Mass on the third day of school left him wondering whether God was watching over.
“I don’t know where He is,” Simpson said.
Police investigate motive for the shooting
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the shooting is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.
O’Hara said police hadn’t yet found any relationship between the shooter and the church, nor determined a motive for the bloodshed. The chief said, however, that investigators were examining a social media post that appeared to show the shooter at the scene.
“The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” said O’Hara, who gave the wounded youngsters’ ages as 6 to 15. He said a wooden plank was placed to barricade some of the side doors, and that authorities found a smoke bomb at the scene.
On a YouTube channel titled Robin W, the alleged shooter released at least two videos before the channel was taken down by site administrators Wednesday.
In one, the alleged shooter shows a cache of weapons and ammunition, some with such phrases as “kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” written on them.
A second video shows the alleged shooter pointing to two outside windows in what appears to be a drawing of the church, and then stabbing it with a long knife. It was unclear when that video was uploaded to the channel.
Westman’s uncle, former Kentucky state lawmaker Bob Heleringer, said he did not know the accused shooter well. He said he last saw Westman at a family wedding a few years ago and was confounded by the violence: “It’s an unspeakable tragedy.”
The police chief said Westman did not have an extensive known criminal history and is believed to have acted alone.
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.”
Frey said the violence had forever changed the students’ families and the city along with them.
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Frey said at a news conference. “These kids were literally praying.”
Bill Bienemann, who lives a couple of blocks away and has long attended Mass at Annunciation Church, said he heard as many as 50 shots over as long as four minutes.
“I was shocked. I said, ‘There’s no way that could be gunfire,’” he said. Bienemann’s daughter was an alumna of the kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school.
Police chief says officers rescued children who hid
The police chief said officers immediately responded to reports of the shooting, entered the church, rendered first aid and rescued some of the children hiding throughout the building.
Frey and Annunciation’s principal said teachers and children, too, responded heroically.
“Children were ducked down. Adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children,” said the principal, Matt DeBoer.
Danielle Gunter, the mother of an eighth-grade boy who was shot, in a statement said her son told her a Minneapolis police officer “really helped him” by giving aid and a hug before her son got into an ambulance.
Amid a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence later Wednesday morning, children in dark green uniforms trickled out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.
Vincent Francoual said his 11-year-old daughter, Chloe, survived the shooting by running downstairs to hide in a room with a table pressed against the door. But he still isn’t sure exactly how she escaped because she is struggling to communicate clearly about the traumatizing scene.
“She told us today that she thought she was going to die,” he said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz lamented that children just starting the school year “were met with evil and horror and death.” He and President Donald Trump ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff on state and federal buildings, respectively, and the White House said the two men spoke. The governor was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in last year’s election against Trump’s running mate, now Vice President JD Vance, a Republican.
From the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram of condolences. The Chicago-born Leo, history’s first American pope, said he was praying for relatives of the dead.
News of the shooting rippled through a national Democratic officials’ meeting nearby in Minneapolis. US Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who represents the area around the school, visited the scene.
Atlanta Archbishop Gregory Hartmeyer, who chairs the board of the National Catholic Education Association, said in a statement that reasonable firearms legislation must be passed.
“The murder of children worshipping at Mass is unspeakable,” Hartmeyer said. “We must take action to protect all children and families from violence.”
A string of fatal shootings in Minneapolis
Monday had been the first day of the school year at Annunciation, a 102-year-old school in a leafy residential and commercial neighborhood about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of downtown Minneapolis.
Karin Cebulla, who said she had worked as a learning specialist at Annuciation and sent her two now-college-aged daughters there, described the school as an accepting, caring community.
“Everyone felt safe here, and I just pray that it continues to be a place where people feel safe,” she said.
The gunfire was the latest in a series of fatal shootings in Minnesota’s most populous city in less than 24 hours. One person was killed and six others were hurt in a shooting Tuesday afternoon. Hours later, two people died in two other shootings in the city.
O’Hara, the police chief, said the Annunciation shooting does not appear to be related to other recent violence.
Alongside many major US cities, violent crime in Minneapolis has decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of homicides between 2020 and 2024 fell by about 7 percent, based on data from AH Datalytics and its Real-Time Crime Index, which tracks crimes across the country using law enforcement data.
Over the first six months of 2025, the index shows a 21 percent decrease in homicides over the same period of 2024, while aggravated assaults — which include non-fatal shootings — were down 8 percent.
 

NEW YORK: The director of the nation’s top public health agency is out after less than one month in the job, US officials announced Wednesday.
“Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote on social media.
HHS officials did not explain why Monarez is no longer with the agency.
Before the department’s announcement, she told The Associated Press: “I can’t comment.”
Monarez, 50, was the agency’s 21st director and the first to pass through Senate confirmation following a 2023 law. She was named acting director in January and then tapped as the nominee in March after Trump abruptly withdrew his first choice, David Weldon.
She was sworn in on July 31 — less than a month ago, making her the shortest-serving CDC director in the history of the 79-year-old agency.
Her short time at CDC was tumultuous. On Aug. 8, at the end of her first full week on the job, a Georgia man opened fire from a spot at a pharmacy across the street from CDC’s main entrance. The 30-year-old man blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal. He killed a police officer and fired more than 180 shots into CDC buildings before killing himself.
No one at CDC was injured, but it shell-shocked a staff that already had low morale from other recent changes.
The Atlanta-based federal agency was initially founded to prevent the spread of malaria in the US Its mission was later expanded, and it gradually became a global leader on infectious and chronic diseases and a go-to source of health information.
This year it’s been hit by widespread staff cuts, resignations of key officials and heated controversy over long-standing CDC vaccine policies upended by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
During her Senate confirmation process, Monarez told senators that she values vaccines, public health interventions and rigorous scientific evidence. But she largely dodged questions about whether those positions put her at odds with Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic who has criticized and sought to dismantle some of the agency’s previous protocols and decisions.
The Washington Post first reported she was ousted, citing unnamed sources within the Trump administration.