Robin Westman, a 23-year-old man who left behind a trail of unsettling internet videos and a terrifying handwritten journal that suggested his perverse motivations, has been identified as the shooter behind Wednesday’s horrifying shooting at a Catholic church in Minneapolis.
An obsession with mass murderers and violence
Westman is accused of posting a 20-minute YouTube video titled “So long and thanks for all the fish” just hours before shooting kids during a back-to-school Mass. He leafed through a red spiral notebook, full of terrifying fantasies and meandering passages, some written in Cyrillic.
One line said: “Mass murder has been on my mind for a while. Writing this journal is causing me a lot of conflict. Another passage praised Sandy Hook murderer Adam Lanza and referred to it as his “favorite” school shooting.
His mother had worked at Annunciation Catholic School until her retirement in 2021, and the gunman wrote about his fantasies about “being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids” and his intention to cause “devastating tragedy” by targeting the school.
Weapons With Unsettling Phrases Marked On Them
In a different video, Westman showed off his guns and magazines, which were scribbled with ominous statements like “where is you God?” “for the children,” and “kill Donald Trump.” According to police, he fired all three of his weapons during the massacre: a rifle, a shotgun, and a handgun.
Additionally, he used wooden planks to block church doors, presumably to keep victims from fleeing.
Annunciation Catholic Church was the calculated target.
According to Westman’s writings, he had researched the school’s vulnerabilities by analyzing crowd sizes and attack schedules. He scribbled, “I think my best plan is to attack a large group of kids coming in from recess,” later considering a church function. Finally, he fired through the stained-glass windows at children sitting inside the sanctuary.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, the assailant died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Two children, ages eight and ten, were killed in the massacre, and at least seventeen others—14 children and three adults—were injured.
A peaceful upbringing with no criminal record
In 2019, at the age of 17, he applied to change his name from Robert Westman to Robin. According to court documents, the modification was approved in January 2020. According to the police, he had no past criminal history and was unknown to them. His motivation is still being looked into.
Growing up in a quiet neighborhood in Richfield, Minnesota, the shooter’s violent, well-planned attack rocked a community and left the country in shock.
