Two children were killed and 17 other people were injured on Wednesday after a gunman opened fire on schoolchildren who were attending Mass at a Minneapolis, Minnesota, Catholic school, authorities said.
The assailant, wielding a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol, fired dozens of rounds through the church windows, officials said. The shooter then took his own life, they said.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooter approached the side of the church and shot toward the children sitting in the pews during the prayer service at the Annunciation Catholic School.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshiping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” said the police chief, who noted that a wooden plank had been put in place to barricade some of the side doors. Authorities found a smoke bomb but no explosives at the scene, he said.
The children who died were 8 and 10, the chief said. Dozens more youngsters were inside.
Officials were looking into the suspect’s motive. O’Hara said the man is in his early 20s, does not have an extensive known criminal history and is believed to have acted alone.
The school was evacuated, and students’ families were later directed to a “reunification zone.” Outside, amid a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence, were uniformed children in their dark green shirts or dresses. Many were trickling out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.
Hennepin Healthcare, the main trauma hospital in Minneapolis, received 11 patients, including nine children — aged 6 through 14 — and two adults, emergency medicine chair Dr. Thomas Wyatt said. He said four of the patients were taken to operating rooms. Children’s Minnesota, a pediatric trauma hospital, said in a statement that five children were admitted.
Bill Bienemann, who lives a couple of blocks away and has long attended Mass at Annunciation Church, said he heard dozens of shots, perhaps as many as 50, over as long as four minutes.
“I was shocked. I said, ‘There’s no way that could be gunfire,’” he said. “There was so much of it. It was sporadic.”
Bienemann’s daughter, Alexandra, said she attended the school from kindergarten to 8th grade, finishing in 2014. After she heard of the shooting, she said she was shaking and crying, and her boss told her to take the day off.
“It breaks my heart, makes me sick to my stomach, knowing that there are people I know who are either injured or maybe even killed,” Alexandra Bienemann said. “It doesn’t make me feel safe at all in this community that I have been in for so long.”
Local, state, county and federal law enforcement officers and agents converged on the area, a leafy residential and commercial neighborhood about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of downtown Minneapolis. On Truth Social, US President Donald Trump said he was briefed on the “tragic shooting” and that the White House would continue to monitor it.
The president said the FBI was on the scene. “Please join me in praying for everyone involved!” he said in his post.
The US Department of Homeland Security is in touch with local authorities and monitoring the situation, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media.
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at the news conference with the police chief. “These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called the violence “horrific” in a social media post.
Dating to 1923, the pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school had an all-school Mass scheduled at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday morning, according to its website. Monday was the first day of school. Recent social media posts from the school show children smiling at a back-to-school event, holding up summer art projects, playing together and enjoying ice pops.
The shooting unfolded while Democratic officials from around the city were meeting elsewhere in Minneapolis, and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin told the gathering what was happening.
There have been three other shootings in the midwestern US city since Tuesday afternoon, including one at a Jesuit high school, that have together left three people dead and seven wounded, according to police.
Wednesday’s shooting did not appear to be related to the others, O’Hara said.
Wednesday’s school shooting also followed a spate of hoax calls about purported shootings on at least a dozen US college campuses. The bogus warnings, sometimes featuring gunshot sounds in the background, prompted universities to issue texts to “run, hide, fight” and frightened students around the nation as the school year begins.
In June, Minnesota also experienced an incident of political violence, when a gunman posing as a police officer allegedly assassinated a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in their home, and wounded another lawmaker and his wife. The suspect was arrested after a massive two-day manhunt and faces state and federal murder charges.