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The 23-year-old who killed two children and wounded 18 others in a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School has been identified as Robin Westman. Emerging information shows that Westman struggled with mental health issues and suicidal ideation and that Westman fixated on mass shooters.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described Westman as a “deranged monster,” and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara called Westman a “coward.” FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that the shooting was being investigated as “domestic terrorism and [a] hate crime targeting Catholics.” But, so far, little information has emerged about what drove Westman to orchestrate such a violent act.
Videos point to garbled ideology
Minneapolis Chief Brian O’Hara said he believes videos posted online and attributed to Westman are real.
One video showed a multi-page message to Westman’s family and friends. It included apologies for turning their lives upside down with Westman’s actions and is signed by Robin Westman. The video displays a tableau of guns and magazines with the names of nearly a dozen mass shooters written on them in white marker. Westman also plays with handfuls of bullets and a knife in the video.
Another video appears to show Westman paging through a journal filled with violent rhetoric and suicidal statements. Significant parts of Westman’s journal were written in Cyrillic script, rather than the Latin alphabet, even though the journal mostly contained English words. Messages included in the videos also included threats against President Trump, as well as racist and antisemitic statements.
An analysis released Wednesday by the ADL’s Center on Extremism suggested that Westman didn’t have a clear motive or ideological motivation for the shooting, but had a “deep fascination with mass shooters,” including obscure messages in the videos associated with shootings like Columbine in 1999.
In complex cases like this shooting, there sometimes aren’t easy answers about motivations, according to Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of "God, Guns, and Sedition."
Ware said the ideas presented in Westman’s videos represent what he calls “ideological convergence,” where people blend elements of various ideologies that speak to their own very personal grievances.
“Frankly, we can overanalyze the ideological underpinnings here … when, in fact, school shootings are part of the American story,” Ware said. “Whether this individual has that ideological foundation or not, we know that there is a long standing lineage of of individuals who are who are loners, who are probably suicidal, committing acts of violence at schools in our country because the accessibility is there, the opportunity is there.”
The FBI this year did add a new category to its counter-terrorism investigations called “nihilistic violent extremism.” It’s not clear that Westman will be investigated under that label, but Ware said these killers generally are driven by a “hatred of society, hatred of life, what you might call misanthropy and nihilism, more than any single ideological tradition, like left-wing or right-wing extremism.”
Although it’s not yet clear what online communities Westman was a part of, Ware said online lionization of mass shooters is a persistent issue, both on the far right and in what’s called the “true crime community,” where school shooters specifically are discussed and celebrated.
“We have an established cultural script in the United States for this kind of violence, where loners or misfits find comfort, find community, online among people who egg them on. They're able to find content that glorifies violence, that celebrates murder, and they commit suicide using firearms on behalf of these or having been inspired by these kind of spaces,” Ware said. “It's very challenging to know how to push back against that without some kind of sweeping changes on social media culture, on gun culture, to try to wrest back control of our communities.”
Close ties to Annunciation
Court filings show that in early 2020, Westman’s first name was legally changed from Robert to Robin. Westman’s mother is listed on court documents as Mary Westman, then of Eagan. She wrote in the application for a name change that Robin Westman, who was 17 at the time, “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a press conference Wednesday, “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” and urged people to instead honor the children who were harmed.
The Westmans appear to have had close ties to Annunciation. O’Hara said in an interview on CNN Thursday morning that Westman both attended school at Annunciation and was a parishioner there.
In a post on Facebook in February 2021, Annunciation congratulated Mary Westman on her retirement after five years of service providing “hospitality, friendship and compassion.” Another social media posting lists her as the “administrative assistant” in the church’s business office. Attempts to seek comment from Mary Westman and other family members were not successful.
The Associated Press reported that former Kentucky state lawmaker Bob Heleringer was Westman’s uncle, but hadn’t seen Westman recently. Heleringer told the Associated Press he wished Westman had “shot me instead of innocent schoolchildren.”
Here’s how to support victims of Minneapolis church shootingWestman’s parents, Mary and James Allen Westman, divorced in 2013. According to court papers, Robin Westman was one of three kids born to Mary and James and was 11 years old at the time of the divorce.
Minneapolis police said Westman didn’t appear to have a criminal record. Westman graduated from Southwest High School in Minneapolis in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to video of the graduation, although Westman didn’t attend the ceremony.
Little is known right now about Westman’s work history. Westman was most recently an employee at the RISE Dispensary in Minnesota for several months earlier this year. A spokesperson for RISE said Westman was not employed by the company at the time of the shooting and that they’re cooperating fully with law enforcement.
Westman lived just over the Minneapolis border in Richfield. Neighbor Oscar Gonzalez said he saw Westman around but didn’t know Westman well. Gonzalez said Westman seemed a bit like a recluse.
The shooting is being investigated by the Minneapolis Police Department in collaboration with the FBI and ATF. O’Hara said Minneapolis police are working with partner agencies to execute four search warrants, including at residences in the Twin Cities tied to Westman.
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