Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected offers of “thoughts and prayers” after two children were killed and 17 others were injured in a shooting at a Catholic school during the first week back after summer vacation.
“Children are dead, there are families that have a deceased child. You cannot put into words the gravity, tragedy or absolute pain of the situation,” Frey said during a press conference Wednesday, not long after a gunman opened fire at Annunciation Catholic School.
“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now, these kids were literally praying,” he added. “It was the first week of school, they were in a church.”
The shooting unfolded around 8:30 a.m. as students and others attended a mass to mark the first week of class at the private school that teaches nearly 400 students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
Authorities confirmed that two children, ages eight and 10 years old, were killed in their pews. Seventeen others were injured, including 14 children and three adults. Two children were also critically injured.
The gunman, who has not been identified but police described as a man in his early 20s, was wearing all black and carried a rifle, a pistol and a shotgun. He had a limited criminal history and died by suicide at the scene.
A motive was not immediately known.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara said authorities believed the gunman fired all three weapons, and the shooting appeared to have mostly been carried out from outside the church. Some of the doors to the church had also been barricaded from the outside.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara said.
Authorities also recovered a smoke bomb but found no explosives. A witness said they saw the shooter pepper-spray through the stained-glass windows into the building before firing “50 to 100 shots.”
The school was evacuated after the shooting and families were directed to a “reunification zone” to find their loved ones.
Hennepin Healthcare, the main trauma hospital in Minneapolis, is treating 11 patients, including nine children and two adults, emergency medicine chair Dr. Thomas Wyatt told the Associated Press.
President Donald Trump has offered condolences to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who wrote on social media that he is “praying for our kids and teachers whose first week of school was marred by this horrific act of violence.”
