2 children killed, 17 injured in US Catholic school shooting

An assailant armed with three guns has killed two children and injured 17 others after firing into a Catholic church where parish school students were attending Mass in Minneapolis, United States.

The shooting, which ended on Wednesday, August 27, 2025, ended when the lone suspect, identified as Robin Westman, 23, “took his own life” at the rear of the church.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who declined to offer a possible motive for the attack, confirmed the incident.

A videotaped message by the suspect showed Westman struggled with depression and was fascinated by the perpetrators of past mass shootings.

FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency was investigating the attack as an “act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.”

Two victims, aged 8 and 10, were slain where they sat as the gunfire turned the morning Mass into pandemonium. It sent worshipers diving behind pews for cover while older children scrambled to shield younger ones, officials said.

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O’Hara said two of the church exits were blocked by wooden planks barricaded outside the doors.

The violence struck at the start of an all-school Mass held annually on the first Wednesday of the academic year at Annunciation Catholic School.

“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara told Reuters.

In addition to the two children killed, 17 other people were struck by gunfire – 14 of them students ages 6 to 18 and three parishioners in their 80s, O’Hara said.

All the injured were expected to recover, according to O’Hara.

The Star