Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Wednesday urged compassion and unity after a shooter opened fire at Annunciation School during a morning back-to-school mass, killing two children and wounding 17 others. Frey praised the “heroic” actions of teachers who shielded students and warned that the tragedy should not be twisted into an excuse to vilify marginalized people.
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“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” Frey said at an afternoon press conference. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them.”
Authorities identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, the child of a former parish employee. FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency is investigating the assault “as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.”
Robin Westman was identified as the alleges shooter at a Catholic church in MinneapolisYoutube/@KSTP 5 Eyewitness News; Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
According to court documents reviewed by local NBC affiliate KARE, Westman applied to change her name when she was 17. That request was granted in January 2020, the station reports.
Related: No, transgender and nonbinary people are not frequently mass shooters
The Human Rights Campaign echoed that warning, stressing that compassion must not give way to scapegoating. HRC National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf, who survived the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, said the tragedy was both devastating and preventable. He pointed to the nearly 60 shootings at K-12 schools in 2025 alone and argued that lawmakers have consistently blocked lifesaving gun reforms.
“While we still don’t know all the facts about what happened in Minneapolis, we must be clear on one key element: to scapegoat an entire marginalized community in a moment of such intense national grief is wrong, dangerous, and dehumanizing,” Wolf said. He added that the undeniable crisis is the broader epidemic of gun violence that continues to claim lives across the country.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who told reporters that he could not confirm Westman’s name change, said the attack began just before 8:30 a.m., when Westman allegedly approached the side of Annunciation Roman Catholic Church and fired a rifle through stained-glass windows into pews filled with children and families. Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed where they sat. Fourteen other children and three adults were wounded, at least two critically.
The shooter, armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, also appeared to barricade some of the church’s doors from the outside. A smoke device was recovered, but no explosives were found. O’Hara said the gunfire was “a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and worshipers” and described the attack as “absolutely incomprehensible.”
Police said Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the church parking lot.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, called the massacre “evil and horror and death,” saying it had shattered what should have been “joy and curiosity” at the start of the school year. He ordered flags flown at half-staff and said President Donald Trump had offered federal support. Pope Leo XIV also conveyed condolences from the Vatican.
A GLAAD spokesperson expressed grief for the victims and warned against spreading misinformation. "Families and an entire community are in shock and pain. Our focus must be on them and on taking steps to comfort them and prevent another tragedy," the spokesperson told The Advocate. "Focusing on the shooter or on misinformation before facts are confirmed does a severe injustice to all impacted. We do know this: gun violence is an epidemic, and the number one killer of children in the U.S."
The spokesperson added, "This marks the fifth school shooting of 2025, according to NBC News. Shootings in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, and California, and countless more in every possible venue. The common thread in all mass shootings is guns and access to guns."
KARE reports that Westman grew up in Richfield, where her mother worked at Annunciation until her retirement in 2021. Investigators are reviewing a manifesto-style video posted on YouTube after the attack that referenced suicide, school shootings, and the parish itself.
As investigators were still exploring a motive, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence suggested on MSNBC that people who suffer from gender dysphoria, the condition that many transgender individuals experience, should be considered mentally ill (they are not) and their access to firearms controlled.
“I think that more broadly we should be looking to identify mental illness as something that, again, the full community agrees in restricting gun rights for it,” Short told Katy Tur. “But I do think that there’s been a sensitivity saying gender dysphoria is not such, and I think the reality is there’s been a greater and greater targeting of Christian and Catholic schools by those who view this as restrictive.”
Advocates emphasized that tragedies like this should not be weaponized to stigmatize transgender people. Data from the Gun Violence Archive shows transgender people are responsible for fewer than 0.2 percent of mass shootings since 2014, while LGBTQ+ people are far more often the victims of such violence.
Editor’s note: This developing story has been updated with additional reporting.
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