The horrific attack on Annunciation Catholic Church that left two children dead and 17 others wounded was the culmination of a deeply disturbed individual’s “obsession with the idea of killing children,” authorities revealed in a press conference today. The chilling motive, based on a trove of writings and videos left behind by the attacker, adds a new layer of horror to a tragedy that has already shocked the nation.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who has been leading the investigation, told reporters that the gunman, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, had a “classic pathway to an active shooter.” He said investigators discovered a rambling manifesto and a series of online videos in which the gunman documented his fascination with past mass murderers, especially the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
“There appears to be only one group that the shooter didn’t hate, one group of people who the shooter admired,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson. “The shooter idolized some of the most notorious school shooters and mass murderers in our country.” Thompson confirmed that the writings explicitly detailed a desire to kill children, and investigators have found no evidence of a specific “triggering event” for the attack.
The gunman’s writings, which were taken down from a YouTube channel by site administrators, also revealed a confused and contradictory mix of ideologies. While some of the messages scrawled on the guns expressed a hatred for Donald Trump and calls for equality, others included antisemitic and anti-Christian slurs. FBI Director Kash Patel, who is investigating the shooting as an act of “domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics,” stated that the writings show a person who appears to “hate all of us.”
Authorities said Westman, who was a former student at Annunciation Catholic School, had conducted surveillance of the church for weeks and had even drawn a diagram of the building in a notebook. The drawings showed a clear and deliberate plan to fire through the windows into the pews where children would be sitting. “It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorize those innocent children,” O’Hara said.
The new details have plunged the community into a fresh wave of grief and despair. For many, the tragedy is no longer a random act of violence but a calculated and premeditated act of evil. As the city of Minneapolis continues to mourn, the horrifying details of the gunman’s mind will serve as a permanent and painful reminder of the psychological darkness that led to the violence.