On the morning of August 27, 2025, just before 8:30 a.m., Robin Westman (formerly known as Robert Westman) committed a multiple murder-suicide next door to Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Westman, the identified gunman, opened fire at 8:30 a.m., dressed in all black. She fired more than 116 rounds, killing two children 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski, injuring 21 others before committing suicide at the scene. Westman was found in possession of four firearms. Although there is no clear motive, Acting United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota, Joe Thompson, stated that Westman was “obsessed with the idea of killing children.”
“Hatred aimed at everyone played a significant role. The shooter expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable. The shooter expressed hate towards Black people. The shooter expressed hate towards Mexican people. The shooter expressed hate towards Christian people. The shooter expressed hate towards Jewish people,” Thompson continued. “In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us. The shooter’s heart was full of hate. There appears to be only one group that the shooter didn’t hate—one group of people the shooter admired. That group were the school shooters and mass murderers that are notorious in this country.”
Mary Grace Westman, Robin Westman’s mother, has refused to cooperate with police and has hired an attorney. As of this publication, she has not made any formal statement to the press or law enforcement.
Police records show that they responded to a “criminal offense” at the home of Westman and her mother in 2016. The case has since been closed, with no further details available.
In January 2018, police in Eagan, Minnesota, were called to the home for an incident described as a “mental health crisis.” However, it remains unclear who the juvenile in need of a mental health check was. Weeks before the tragedy, Westman visited her former childhood church and school to “scout” the area, interacting with people there and claiming she was trying to reconnect with her faith.
Four days before the tragedy, Westman went to purchase a small pre-owned .38 Special revolver at Frontiersman Sports gun shop in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She appeared “seemingly normal” according to the gun shop owner, Kory Krause. Krause implied that the gun was purchased legally by Westman, and was not used in Annunciation Catholic School shooting.
There have been nine school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. This means that for the current school year (August 1, 2025, to September 11, 2025), the United States is averaging a school shooting with two or more deaths every 4.5 days — nearly one every week.
There have been 230 such shootings since 2018. There were 39 school shootings with injuries or deaths last year. There were 38 in 2023, 51 in 2022, 35 in 2021, 10 in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.
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On Sept. 10, a male student shot and injured two teenagers at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado. The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to authorities.
Since 1996, 1,714 people have been killed and 2,657 injured in mass public shootings. These statistics translate to an average of 3.4 people killed and 5.3 people injured per mass public shooting event. While tragic, the overall risk of becoming a victim of a mass shooting—whether killed or injured—remains low.
When individuals are affected by mass shootings, they are more likely to be injured than killed—a trend that has continued since the mid-1980s. Mass shootings are most likely to occur in workplaces and schools. Handguns are the most commonly used weapons in these incidents, accounting for 74% of cases. Additionally, 54.4% of perpetrators tend to be white, and 95.3% are overwhelmingly male.
