The courageous acts of terrified children targeted in deadly church shooting

Minneapolis: A 10-year-old acted like a human shield to protect a younger schoolmate. An eighth-grader prayed while hiding under a pew. A frightened 11-year-old asked her father to lock the doors and draw the curtains when she arrived home.

These were just a handful of stories of courage and fear that have emerged after Wednesday’s horrific shooting at a Minneapolis church during a morning Mass for Catholic school children.

One of the students at Annunciation Catholic Church took a shotgun blast to his back after putting his body in the line of fire trying to protect another child, county health officials said.

“There’s a lot of maybe unrecognised heroes in this event, along with the children that were protecting other children,” Martin Scheerer, a director at Hennepin Emergency Medical Services, said. “The teachers were getting shot at. They were protecting the kids.”

Two children – Fletcher Alexander Merkel, 8, and Harper Lillian Moyski, 10 – were killed in the shooting.

City officials on Thursday also increased to 15 the number of wounded children – aged six to 15 – in addition to three parishioners in their 80s who were also injured. Most were expected to survive, O’Hara said. One child was in a critical condition on Thursday while 11 other victims remained in hospitals.

Fletcher’s father Jesse Merkel on Thursday implored their shaken community to remember the eight-year-old by the life he led, rather than by how he was killed.

Tearfully reading a statement outside the church where his son was killed, he said Fletcher loved his family and friends and enjoyed fishing, cooking and playing any sport.

Because of the shooter’s actions, Merkel said, “we will never be allowed to hold him, talk to him, play with him and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming”.

Even as Merkel mourned the loss of his son, he said he was thankful for the “swift and heroic actions” of adults and students inside the church without whom “this could have been a tragedy of many magnitudes more”.

In a statement released on Thursday, Moyski’s parents described their daughter Harper as “a bright, joyful, and deeply loved 10-year-old” who was “adored” by her younger sister.

“As a family, we are shattered, and words cannot capture the depth of our pain,” the statement read.

They said that they were focused on healing, but added that they hoped Harper’s memory would fuel action that might prevent shootings in the future.

“No family should ever have to endure this kind of pain,” Harper’s parents wrote. “We urge our leaders and communities to take meaningful steps to address gun violence and the mental health crisis in this country.”

The shooter, armed with a rifle, a pistol and a shotgun, fired through the stained-glass windows at students at a service to celebrate the new school year.

Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said during a news conference that the shooter – identified as Robin Westman, 23 – fired 116 rifle rounds into the church.

“It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorise those innocent children,” O’Hara said.

Reverend Dennis Zehren, who was inside the church with the nearly 200 children, said the responsorial psalm – which spoke of light in the darkness – had almost ended when he heard someone yell, “Down down, everybody down”, and gunshots rang out.

Fifth-grader Weston Halsne said he ducked for the pews, covering his head, shielded by a friend who was on top of him. His friend was hit, he said. “I was super scared for him, but I think now he’s OK,” the 10-year-old said.

Chloe Francoual, 11, was among the students who were terrified and traumatised by the flying bullets and shattered glass.

“She thought she was going to die with her friends,” her father, Vincent Francoual, said.

After father and daughter were reunited in the school gym after the attack, the pair burst into tears, he said. Later, Chloe wanted all the doors in the house locked and the curtains drawn, and implored her father not to walk the dog for fear of dangers outside.

“She’s just a little girl,” her father said. “She’s feeling all this guilt that she is OK, but her friends aren’t.”

Young survivors and witnesses of such violence often experience a range of symptoms in the first few weeks after the event, said Dr Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College. As part of an “acute stress reaction” they might have separation anxiety, trouble sleeping or experience a temporary regression of developmental steps such as a return to bed-wetting, Saltz said.

On Thursday, authorities were poring over the videos, writings and the movements of the shooter. Investigators recovered hundreds of pieces of evidence from the church and three residences, and are seeking warrants to search devices.

Westman, whose mother worked for the parish before retiring in 2021, shared a suicide note in a video posted to YouTube. The shooter described struggles with anger and depression and a belief that death was near because of a vaping habit.

On a YouTube channel titled Robin W, the person filming the video points to two windows in what appears to be a drawing of the church, then stabs it with a long knife. The now-deleted videos also showed weapons and ammunition, scrawled with “kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” along with the names of past mass shooters.

There also were hundreds of pages written in Cyrillic, a centuries-old script still used in Slavic countries. In one, Westman wrote, “When will it end?” The police chief said Westman did not have an extensive known criminal history and was believed to have acted alone.

“Everything we’ve seen so far is a classic pathway to an active shooter,” O’Hara said, adding that police have seen nothing “specific to trigger the amount of hate that occurred”.

Joe Thompson, acting US attorney for Minnesota, cited writings the shooter left behind saying, “The shooter wanted to watch children suffer.”

In a country that has grown accustomed to mass shootings, each new attack stirs a long-running national debate over the causes: easy access to guns versus treatment of mental illness in an expensive, privatised healthcare system.

US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr said his agency was investigating whether antidepressants and other drugs prescribed to some transgender people were a factor in the sort of deadly violence seen at the Annunciation Church.

The vast majority of US mass shootings are done by teenage boys and young men. Westman was a transgender woman, according to court records marking her name change as a teenager.

FBI Director Kash Patel said agents had evidence the shooting was an “act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology”. Westman’s writings included anti-Catholic prejudice and a call for the killing of US President Donald Trump, a Republican, Patel said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, was joined by several gun-control advocacy groups to call for a ban on certain high-capacity semi-automatic rifles, sometimes called assault weapons.

The mayor took issue with those who say the prevalence of gun violence in the US is a mental health issue, unrelated to access to firearms.

“People who say, ‘This is not about guns’ – you gotta be kidding me: this is about guns,” Frey said.

“There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload. We’re not talking about your father’s hunting rifle here. We’re talking about guns that are built to pierce armour and kill people.”

Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, a gun violence prevention group, said: “A 10-year-old boy had more courage hiding in a church pew while his friend shielded him with his body than I have seen from far too many lawmakers more beholden to a gun lobby than a child.”

Francoual said his daughter wanted to move to her father’s native France now. In Europe, you can get a gun for hunting, but “you can’t just walk into a store and get these weapons”.

“We have crazy people all over the world, but not these weapons,” he said.

Reuters, AP

If you or anyone you know needs support, call Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, Lifeline on 131 114 or beyondblue on 1800 512 348.

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