Last week, on Wednesday, August 27th, Annunciation Catholic School dealt with a traumatic school intruder as they celebrated mass. The K-8 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, dealt with the tragic loss of two students. Identified as Fletcher Markel (8) and Harper Maloyski (10). Eighteen others are currently hospitalized with injuries.
Twenty-three yea-old Robin Westman was identified as the shooter. He identified as transgender, transitioning from man to woman. Westman was a previous attendant of the school, and his mother was a previous worker. Westman approached the side of the school and fired 116 rounds of shots through the windows using three different firearms: a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol as the children celebrated the first mass of the school year. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound right after the shooting.
Since the identification of Robin Westman, many chilling facts about him are surfacing. Westman dealt with severe cases of depression and suicidal/homicidal thoughts. Many previous acquaintances, teachers, and classmates report that sometimes Westman did carry out some erratic behaviors, such as hailing Hitler, self-harm, obsessing over death, and confusion about gender identity.
From CNN, as a teenager, Robin Westman claimed to have been suspended after discussing school shootings with classmates – later writing in a journal that the incident was the origin of a deep obsession with mass shooters. More recently, Robin’s journal entries have been released to the public, and they entail disturbing passages.
Westman shared his fascinations with “killing people” and “shooting up schools or jobs”. “For some reason, the fact that I have a pretty good life and the fact that I want to kill people have never correlated to me.” Every school I went to, I have some fantasy at some point or another of shooting up my school,” Westman added. “Even every job.”
The journal includes discussions of other mass shooters, and dark fantasies about Westman reveling in killing children and following in the footsteps of murderers like Adam Lanza, who gunned down 26 people – including 20 children – at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.
The entries are also full of racist and antisemitic slurs and sentiments. Many people speculated this to be a hate crime against the Catholic Church; however, Westman writes in his journal: “This is not a church or religion attack, that is not the message,” Westman wrote. “The message is there is no message.”
Robin Westman uploaded chilling videos to YouTube, which have since been taken down. The video made by Westman showed an extensive collection of guns, ammunition, and what appears to be a handwritten four-page manifesto addressed to Westman’s family and friends.
The letter begins, “I don’t expect forgiveness … I do apologize for the effects my actions will have on your lives.”
“I was corrupted by this world and have learned to hate what life is,” the writing continues.
The end of the second page reads, “I have wanted this for so long. I am not well. I am not right. I am a sad person, haunted by these thoughts that do not go away. I know this is wrong, but I can’t seem to stop myself. I am severely depressed and have been suicidal for years. Only recently have I lost all hope and decided to perform my final action against this world.”
The manifesto concludes by asking for prayers for the victims and their families.
