Villainising Trans Community After School Shooting A Lack Of “Common Humanity”, Says Mayor

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called for care and compassion after the perpetrator of a school shooting was identified with potential ties to the trans community.

In a back-to-school morning mass at Annunciation School, a shooter opened fire, killing two children aged 8 and 10, and wounding 17 others, 7 critically. Witnesses say they heard as many as 50 shots over four minutes.

Students had returned for the new school year on Monday.

Authorities have identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, the child a former administrative assistant at the Annunciation Church. Westman had no prior criminal history and is thought to have acted alone. According to court documents reviewed by local NBC affiliate KARE, Westman applied to change her name when she was 17, a request that was granted in January 2020.

At an afternoon press conference, Frey praised the “heroic” actions of the teachers and children involved, and urged reporters to exercise compassion and empathy.

“I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community,” he said. “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainise our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them.”

Scapegoating “wrong, dangerous, and dehumanising” says survivor advocate

Frey joins LGBTQIA+ advocates as they warn against using the attack to stigmatise transgender people, and the perpetuation of transphobic rhetoric in the coverage of the shooting.

National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, Brandon Wolf, himself a survivor of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, emphasised that the shooting was representative of a larger crisis of gun violence in the country and shouldn’t be weaponised against the trans community.

“While we still don’t know all the facts about what happened in Minneapolis, we must be clear on one key element: to scapegoat an entire marginalised community in a moment of such intense national grief is wrong, dangerous, and dehumanising,” he said.

Speaking to The Advocate, a GLAAD spokesperson said the focus should remain on the community effected and the prevention of further tragedy.

“Focusing on the shooter or on misinformation before facts are confirmed does a severe injustice to all impacted. We do know this: gun violence is an epidemic, and the number one killer of children in the U.S.”

“This marks the fifth school shooting of 2025, according to NBC News. Shootings in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, and California, and countless more in every possible venue. The common thread in all mass shootings is guns and access to guns.”

Data from the Gun Violence Archive shows transgender people have been responsible for fewer than 0.2 percent of mass shootings since 2014, with LGBTQ+ people far more often to be the victims of such violence.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the motive was still unclear, but authorities are aware the shooter had scheduled a manifesto to be released on YouTube. FBI Director Kash Patel the incident is being treated as “as an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.”

Police say Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the church parking lot.

Flags have been flown at half-mast, with President Donald Trump offering federal support.