A 23-year-old man who killed two young school students and wounded more than a dozen after opening fire on youngsters sitting in a Catholic church in the US city of Minneapolis was “filled with hatred” and “obsessed” with killing children, authorities said.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said on Thursday that the suspect had fired 116 bullets through stained-glass windows while the children celebrated Mass on Wednesday during the first week of classes at the Annunciation Catholic School.
“It is very clear that this shooter had the intention to terrorise those innocent children,” O’Hara said.
The police chief also requested that the news media stop reporting the shooter’s name because the purpose of this “heinous attack” was to gain “notoriety”. The assailant took their own life in a car park following the shooting.
The victims of the attack were an eight-year-old boy and a girl, aged 10.
Acting US Attorney Joe Thompson said videos and writings the assailant left behind “expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable”, including Mexicans, Christians and Jews.
But one group the attacker did not hate was “the most notorious school shooters and mass murderers in our country’s history”, whom the suspect “idolised”, Thompson said.
In particular, “the shooter was obsessed with the idea of killing children”, he said.
The latest mass shooting in the US has once again renewed debate about gun safety and restrictions in the US.
Deadly gun violence has grown more common in schools, churches and other settings once considered safe in the US, despite efforts to beef up security and identify potential perpetrators before they can act.
The FBI has gathered evidence demonstrating the church attack “was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology”, director Kash Patel said on X earlier on Thursday.
Family members described eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel as a boy who loved his family, fishing, cooking and any sport he was allowed to play. The parents of the second victim, 10-year-old Harper Moyski, said in a statement that she was a bright and joyful child.
The number of children wounded in the attack was raised to 15 on Thursday after one previously unknown victim came forward, police said. Three people in their 80s were also injured.
One child is in critical condition, and an adult is in serious condition, authorities said.
Police said the shooter, who had no criminal record, had recently purchased all three guns legally and had changed their name in 2020 and identified as a transgender woman.
The shooter also previously attended the Catholic school linked to the church, and their mother had previously worked at the church.
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