EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the Minneapolis Church Shooter
What we know so far, and what's been debunked.
Yesterday was a beautiful day in Minneapolis. I know because I was there - I flew in on Tuesday for a routine business trip. Moments after I landed, news of a mass shooting broke out on the news. 1 dead and 6 injured after a gunman opened fire on a group of people in southern Minneapolis. Figures, I thought to myself, there would be a mass shooting here the second my plane touched down. But that incident would soon be overshadowed by another, far worse shooting that claimed the lives of two children and injured many others at the Annunciation Catholic Church.
I was in a crowded, dimly lit conference room when I first saw the news. My face turned white as I struggled to hide the sense of dread washing over me from my coworkers. I spent the remainder of my day in a state of silent panic as hundreds of notifications flooded my phone.
Breathe, Becca. Take your time to respond. The 48-hour rule is in effect.
The attack unfolded during morning Mass at the Church of the Annunciation in the Windom neighborhood of Minneapolis. This Catholic parish doubles as the home for Annunciation Catholic School, serving students from kindergarten through eighth grade. It was the first week back to school and the sanctuary held a mix of children, educators, and elderly parishioners. At approximately 8:30 a.m., gunfire erupted from outside, shattering windows and showering bullets over the unsuspecting victims inside.
Two children were killed - an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, their identities withheld to protect grieving families. Seventeen others sustained injuries, including 14 children. The shooter, armed with several firearms as well as a smoke grenade, had barricaded several exterior doors, complicating evacuation and heightening the panic. Eyewitness accounts described chaos: screams piercing the sanctuary, children huddling under pews, and the acrid smell of gunpowder mingling with incense.
The shooter was soon confirmed to be 23-year-old Robin M. Westman, born June 17, 2002, in the Twin Cities suburb of Richfield. Westman, who was transgender and who legally changed his name in 2019 from Robert to Robin, was no stranger to his targets. Westman had attended Annunciation Catholic School himself, graduating in 2017. This proximity combined with the anti-Christian and overtly Satanic references left behind in his online footprint suggest Westman had a deeply personal connection to his victim pool.
Westman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the church's rear parking lot, ending the rampage unilaterally. He used a rifle for the primary assault, firing through windows into the sanctuary. In addition, a shotgun and pistol were found on Westman's person. All of the firearms were legally acquired in recent months.
Before the shooting, Westman uploaded two videos to YouTube - one 10 minutes long, the other 20 - scheduled to publish around the attack's onset. These were promptly removed by the platform, but not before being archived, downloaded, and widely distributed online. In the first video, Westman stood in front of a bed covered in guns and gear. Crude, edgy memes, slurs, and homages to other mass shooters were scribbled in white marker, in typical “Christchurch” fashion.
The second video contained his handwritten manifesto, chronicling his struggles with suicide, chronic depression, and extremely violent thoughts alongside an obsession with prior mass shooters. Westman addressed family and friends in a quasi-apologetic tone, alongside a hand-drawn schematic of the church – effectively a tactical map.
The shooting had all the usual hallmarks of accelerationism – Contradictory political opinions (“Kill Israel!”, “Kill Hamas!”, “Kill Trump!”, “Release the [Epstein] files!”), a cache of guns, including an AR-15, a plan that aimed to inflict the highest number of child casualties, and shout-outs to YouTubers like Brandon Herrera stood out the most. Westman wanted fame, he wanted notoriety, but more than anything else, he wanted us to react.
If you've been following my work on online cults, Satanic accelerationism, and the radicalization pipelines that so often culminate in real-world violence, you know I approach these stories with caution. My 48-hour rule isn't arbitrary – it’s a necessary buffer against the flood of misinformation that follows every such tragedy. But with the dust settling on the August 27, 2025, shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, a very disturbing picture had already begun to emerge.
The case was laced with ideological markers from the fringe corners of the internet I've tracked for years: mass shooter idolization, hateful slurs and edgy memes plastered all over a cache of weapons in white marker, and countless indicators of accelerationist influence. A reference to the Madison, WI school shooter Samantha Rupnow and a manifesto written in Cyrillic were significant early clues in the likely radicalization vector. I had a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, I still had another 6 hours stuck in that cramped, Minnesota conference room… and the flood of misinformation was already underway.
