MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In the vaulted church of a Catholic school in Minneapolis, the pews were packed with teachers, parents and schoolchildren listening to a psalm on the third day of the new school year.
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“For you darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day,” a church member read to some 200 students Wednesday morning as sun streamed through stained glass windows.
Just before the congregants were to proclaim “Alleluia,” bullets blasted through the windows.
“Down! Everybody down!” someone shouted as children ducked for cover behind wooden pews from a barrage of gunfire. One student threw himself on top of a friend and was shot in the back. A youth minister called her husband to say goodbye as bullets flew.
People used a wood plank to barricade a door and fled to a gymnasium. Sixth grader Chloe Francoual raced down a set of stairs and left behind a classmate in the rush before hiding in a room with a table barricading the door. She’d later tell her father that she thought she was going to die.
The shooting went on for several minutes, according to a man living near the church, who said he heard as many as 50 shots.
Two children, 8 and 10, were killed in the latest horrific school shooting in the United States, this time inside a church emblazoned with the words “This is the house of God and the Gate of Heaven.” Seventeen others were wounded, including kids as young as 6 and parishioners in their 80s.
Dozens of law enforcement officers soon arrived to the school. Police said the suspect, Robin Westman, 23, was found dead by suicide behind the church. Westman had been a student and member of the Annunciation church in the past and his mother worked for the parish, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said on NBC’s “TODAY” show Thursday. No motive has been revealed.
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