Officials say critically injured people expected to survive after attack that killed two children during mass at church
Minneapolis woke on Thursday to the aftermath of the mass shooting at a Catholic school in which two children were killed and 17 people injured, stunning the close-knit community and prompting the FBI to investigate the act as domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.
A shooter at the Annunciation Catholic school in the south of the city killed two children, aged eight and 10, in church pews during morning mass. Fourteen other children, aged six to 15, were injured, two of them critically, though officials said they were expected to survive. The shooter killed themself.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping,” the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said. “The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible.”
He said the incident took place just before 8.30am during a service marking the first week of school. The pews had been packed with teachers, parents and children listening to a psalm. Just before the congregants were to proclaim “Alleluia”, bullets were fired through the windows.
