Killer at Minneapolis | Investigators looking for mobile

(Minneapolis) Investigators seek to understand what prompted a heavily armed person to open fire on Wednesday in a church in Minneapolis, adjoining a Catholic school, killing two children and injuring 17 people before committing suicide.

The American federal police, the FBI, opened an investigation for “act of internal terrorism” and “crime motivated by anticatholic hatred”, announced Kash Patel, boss of this agency.

President Donald Trump, who said on Wednesday that he was “fully informed” of the “tragic” attack, ordered the sobbles of the flags until August 31 on federal buildings.

Investigators identified the person who fired like Robin Westman, a 23 -year -old transgender woman, who, according to American media, had attended school as a student.

According to investigators, Westman has fired dozens of covers using two rifles and a pistol, through the stained glass windows of the Annunciation church in this city in the North of the United States. Dozens of schoolchildren attended a mass there, two days after the start of the school year.

“The first blow, I said to myself:” What is that? “, Telery a 10 -year -old student at the CBS channel told. “Then I heard another. I threw myself under the bench and I covered my head ”. One of his comrades, he continued, “saved” him by lie down on him. And he “was touched”.

The two dead children were 8 and 10 years old. The victims injured by bullet -14 children aged 6 to 15 and three parishioners over the age of 80 to survive their injuries, according to Brian O’hara, the chief of the Minneapolis police.

Images have shown panicked parents coming to seek their children in an imposing police deployment.

In a joint declaration, the director of the school and the priest of the church stressed that the “heroic staff took the students under the benches” a few seconds after the start of the shooting.

Vigil

“The cruelty and cowardice that must be shown to shoot in a church filled with children is absolutely incomprehensible,” said Brian O’Hara.

“We have no mobile at the moment,” he added, adding that the investigators were led to three addresses searches.

Westman had prepared a manifesto intended to be broadcast on YouTube and that the police said they “withdrew”. His weapons had been acquired “legally”, according to this source.

According to the boss of the FBI, Robin Westman was “born under the name of Robert Westman”.

Documents of 2019-2020 courts, consulted by AFP, report a change of first name, from Robert to Robin, of this person born of male sex but identifying himself as a woman.

“We have confirmation that the shooter was a man who said he was transgender,” wrote Kristi Noem, the secretary of internal security, evoking a “crazy monster”.

The Trump administration has been conducting an offensive against policies favorable to transgender persons for months.

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, has condemned any instrumentalization by the American far right of the killing.

Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday evening in the suburbs of Minneapolis for a vigil in tribute to the victims, noted an AFP correspondent.

With more firearms in circulation than residents, the United States has the highest weapon mortality rate in all developed countries.

The killings are a recurring scourge that successive governments have so far failed to stem, many Americans remaining very attached to their arms.

This year, at least 287 killings having left at least four dead or injured, took place in the United States, according to the NGO Gun Violence Archive.

In 2024, at least 16,700 people, not to mention suicides, had been killed by firearm.