Minneapolis Catholic schoolchildren listened to a prayer, then ducked for cover from gunfire

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.

“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’s mother once worked there, but the shooter had no other known connection to the church. No motive has not been revealed.

Saved by a friend

The student whose friend had shielded him, fifth grader Weston Halsne, told reporters in the aftermath outside the church that he sat just a few feet from the windows shattered by the blasts.

“My friend Victor, like, saved me, though, because he laid on top of me,” the 10-year-old said. “He’s really brave, and I hope he’s good in the hospital.”

His mother met him outside, wrapping him in a hug.

Fourteen of the wounded victims were kids, ranging in age from 6 to 15. Police said all are expected to survive.

Vincent Francoual said his daughter still struggles to communicate clearly about the traumatizing scene, her father said.

“It’s too much to process,” he said.

Outside the church and school was a milling of emotion. Parents embraced children and other parents. Heavily armored law enforcement officers walked around as police cordoned off the crime scene.

A close community shaken by violence

Many knew each other well. It’s a tight-knit community built around the century-old Catholic school and parish, a city suburb better described as a small town. It’s towering belfry rings over the neighborhood of tidy homes and grass lawns, as it did after the shooting Wednesday.

God wasn’t far from people’s minds. Some had questions, others sought peace and healing.

“I’m just asking (God), ‘Why right now?’ It’s little kids,” said Aubrey Pannhoff, 16, a student at a nearby Catholic school who stood at the edge of the police cordon.

History’s first American Pope, Leo XIV, said he was praying for the families of those dead and injured in the “terrible tragedy.”

The Rev. Dennis Zehren was to give a sermon to the congregation that Wednesday. At the vigil held later that night, his face and eyes were red against his white vestments.

When asked what he planned to tell the students on their first week of school, emotion choked his voice.

At the vigil, Archbishop Bernard Hebda addressed some 2,000 people, where psalms were sung and the silences burrowed deep in the wide room.

“I can understand why someone could resonate with the Psalmist’s question: ‘Why, oh God, have you forgotten me?” Hebda said. “The example of Mary, a mother and a disciple who knew great suffering in her own life, should give each of us courage and hope.”