A shooter opened fire Wednesday morning during Mass at a Minneapolis Catholic school, killing two children and injuring 17 other people before killing himself, officials said.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooter — armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol — approached the side of the church and shot through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School.
The school was evacuated, and students’ families were later directed to a “reunification zone” at the school. President Donald Trump and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in separate social media posts that they had been briefed on the shooting.
Here’s the latest:
At least 9 children are being treated at a trauma hospital
Hennepin Healthcare, the main trauma hospital in Minneapolis, received 11 patients, including nine children and two adults, said Dr. Thomas Wyatt, the chair of emergency medicine, during a press briefing.
There were no deaths among any of the 11 patients brought there. Four of the patients were taken to operating rooms.
The children brought to Hennepin were ages six through 14.
Police chief says the shooting was a ‘deliberate act of violence against innocent children’
“The sheer cruelty and cowardice, firing into a church full of children, is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara said during the briefing.
Police chief: Suspect is believed to have fired all 3 weapons: a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol
He said it appears all or most of the shooting was done from outside. Police found no casings inside.
Authorities also found a smoke bomb but no explosives at the scene.
Minneapolis police say the shooting left 3 dead, including the shooter
The police chief said dozens of children were inside the mass at the time of the shooting. Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed where they sat in the pews, he added.
Seventeen other people were wounded — 14 of them children, the police chief said.
O’Hara said the shooter, in his early 20s, shot himself behind the church.
Officials believed he acted alone and are investigating what he left behind that would speak to his motive.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara says the shooting unfolded during a mass at the church
O’Hara said officers responded to a report of a shooting during a mass at the church that was meant to the first week of school for children attending the Catholic school.
The police chief said the shooter was armed with a shotgun, a rifle and a pistol. He said the shooter fired the rifle through the church windows toward children sitting in the pews and struck children and worshippers inside.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says children are dead after shooting at Catholic school
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Frey said at a press conference outside the school. “These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”
Locals express shock and sadness
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 eighth 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.”
The scene outside
Outside of the school, amidst a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence, children stood dressed in their dark green shirts or dresses.
Many were trickling out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.
The shooting is the latest act of gun violence in Minneapolis
One person was killed and six others were hurt in a shooting on Tuesday afternoon outside a high school in Minneapolis. Hours later, two people died in two other shootings in the city.
This was the first week back to class for Annunciation School
Dating to 1923, the prekindergarten 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, and social media photos from that day show students in green uniforms greeting each other at bicycle racks, smiling for the camera and sitting together.
What we kno
w about the shooting so far
A shooting occurred Wednesday morning during the first week of classes at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Minnesota’s governor said. Authorities gave no immediate information on the number of injuries, but Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “horrific.”
The Minneapolis city government said the shooter had been “contained” after the gunfire at Annunciation Catholic School and there was no longer any “active threat” to residents.
Walz said on social media that he had been briefed on the shooting. “I’m praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence,” Walz wrote on X.
As police, FBI and other federal agents and ambulances converged on the school, a person answering the phone there said students were being evacuated.
A spokesperson for Hennepin Healthcare, which has Minnesota’s largest emergency department, said in a text message that it was actively dealing with an emergency and provided no additional details. A social media post from the company said it was caring for patients from the shooting.
