A shooting at a school in Miniapolis, killing two children and injuring 17 others.
FBI director Kash Patel said in a post on X, “The FBI is investigating this shooting as an Act of domestic terrorism and hates the crime that targets Catholics.”
Two children, aged eight and 10, died, when an attacker set fire to the city’s announcement on Wednesday morning as the children were celebrating on a large scale.
The attacker, who was killed in a self-proclaimed gun-shot wound scene, was later nominated by the police as 23-year-old Robin Westman.
Pope Leo XIV, the first American Pope, was among those who paid tribute to the young victims, said that we were “deeply unhappy” from the attack.
Police chief Brian O’Hara told reporters, “It was a deliberate work of violence to worship innocent children and others.”
He said, “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing in church filled with children is absolutely out of comprehension.”
Asked about Patel’s remarks, he said that the Miniapolis Police Department is leading the investigation with the support of federal agencies – and will pursue the evidence wherever he moves forward.
Authorities have not yet released a suspicious purpose for the attack.
Police on Wednesday started receiving a shooting call just before the local time (13:00 GMT).
The attacker approached the banks of the church, which also had a school, and three firearms – a rifle, a gun and a pistol, fired dozens of dozens of firing through the windows. The police also found a smoke bomb at the scene.
The officials are investigating whether the suspect shot inside the building or if all the shot came from outside the church, seeing that no bhise was found inside the bullets.
“I could hear ‘boom, boom, boom’,” PJ Mud, who lives close to the church and was working from home on Wednesday morning, told the Wall Street Journal. “It suddenly sank on me – it was a shooting.”
He then fled to the church where he saw three magazine cartridges on the ground.
A 10 -year -old boy who escaped from the attack told the CBS -affiliated WCCO that his friend saved him from bullets by lying on him.
“I was like two seats from the stained glass window,” he said. “My friend, Victor saved me, because he had put it on me, but he became a hit.”
“My friend was killed in the back, he went to the hospital … I was a super scared for him, but I think he is fine now,” he said.
The Announcement Church, located in a residential area of ​​Southern Miniapolis, teaches students between 5 and 14 years of age.
The attacker’s mother, Mary Grace Westman, according to a 2016 school newsletter, used to work in school earlier. A post on Facebook says that she retired from the role in 2021.
The police received a note that Westman was about to publish online at the time of shooting. Investigators have removed the post.
Westman’s name was legally converted from Robert to Robin in 2020, Minnesota Court Records Show. In the application, the judge wrote: “The minor child identifies as a woman and wants her name to reflect that identity.”
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, the Mayor Jacob Frey of Miniapolis pushed back against the hatred directed by the transgender community in view of the attack.
In his own update, Homeland’s Security Secretary Christie Nom said that Westman was a “person, claiming to be a transgender”, and in his post on X, Patel referred to Westman as a “man”.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that President Donald Trump and his team expressed their “deep condolences” and offered assistance.
He said that the situation was “all very common – not only in Minnesota, but across the country”, saying that he hoped that no community or school had ever had to pass by a day.
Trump later stated that the American flag would be flown in half a mast in the White House as an honor of the victims.
