28.8.2025
The FBI is investigating Wednesday’s deadly shooting at a Minneapolis church, which left at least two students dead, and 19 others wounded, as an act of domestic terrorism and an anti-Catholic hate crime, FBI Director Kash Patel announced Thursday.
Investigators were seeking to find out why a heavily armed shooter opened fire on children at a church service in Minneapolis on Wednesday, killing two pupils and wounding 17 people in the latest violent tragedy to jolt the United States.
City police chief Brian O’Hara said that the attacker sprayed bullets through the windows of the Annunciation Church as dozens of young students were at a Mass marking their first week back at school.
The church sits next to an affiliated Catholic school in Minneapolis, the largest city in the Midwestern state of Minnesota, where hundreds attended vigils for the victims on Wednesday evening.
Authorities identified the attacker as Robin Westman, a 23-year-old transgender woman, who according to US media, had attended the school.
“Two young children, ages eight and 10, were killed where they sat in the pews,” O’Hara said. Fourteen wounded children were expected to survive, while three elderly parishioners were also shot, he added.
The shooter fired a rifle, shotgun, and pistol before dying by suicide in the parking lot. The attacker had recently purchased the weapons legally, police said.
One 10-year-old said he had survived the shooting thanks to a friend who covered him with his body.
“I just ran under the pew, and then I covered my head,” he told broadcaster CBS. “My friend Victor saved me though, because he laid on top of me, but he got hit.”
A joint statement from the school’s principal and pastor said that within seconds of the start of shooting, “our heroic staff moved students under the pews”.
The mass shooting is the latest in a long line of deadly school attacks in the US, where attempts to restrict easy access to firearms face political deadlock.
FBI Director Patel Patel identified the shooter as “Robin Westman, a male born as Robert Westman”.
Westman, 23, legally changed name in 2020 and identified as female, court papers show.
This year, there have been at least 287 mass shootings – defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded – across the country, according to the Gun Violence Archive. AFP