Minneapolis shooting live updates: Shooter 'wanted to watch children suffer' as 120 shell casings are recovered, officials say

Jesse Merkel, the father of 8-year-old shooting victim Fletcher Merkel, spoke out after the violent attack that killed his son.

Merkel asked that his son be remembered for who he was, not the act of violence that ended his life.

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The father of 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel made an emotional statement to the media today, identifying his son as one of the two children killed in yesterday's shooting.

Jesse Merkel blamed the actions of a "coward" for the fact that Fletcher's family cannot "hold him, talk to him, play with him and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming."

"Fletcher loved his family, friends, fishing, cooking and any sports that he was allowed to play," his father said. "While the hole in our hearts and lives will never be filled, I hope that in time, our family can find healing."

A spokesperson for the family, Blois Olson, said that Fletcher was the third of four children.

Three of the four Merkel children were attending Mass yesterday; the other two were not injured, Olson said.

Jesse Merkle said he prayed that the family of the 10-year-old victim could find some semblance of healing one day, as well.

Though the shooter had some disturbing posts on social media, there is no evidence to suggest that she was legally barred from purchasing a firearm, O'Hara told reporters.

Before yesterday, the shooter did not have a criminal history or any diagnosed mental health disorders, O'Hara said. There was no record of any mental health commitments by the state, either, O'Hara added.

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions, reiterated that when reporters asked about reports regarding the shooter's social media presence. He said that there are a specific process and a legal threshold that have to be met in Minnesota to prohibit firearms sales.

"We need the help of the public and everybody else if there's concerning social media behavior by anybody — or that there's concern in their community— that they are contacting their law enforcement so that we can adequately address that in the process," Evans said. "That did not happen in this case."

In Minneapolis, mourners have been gathering since sunrise outside the church. NBC News’ Jay Gray reports on the grief and frustration being expressed at the scene, as well as the calls for gun legislation.

Officials found around 120 shell casings from three different guns the shooter used yesterday, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said today at a news briefing.

There were 116 rifle rounds recovered, as well as three shotgun rounds and a live bullet trapped in a handgun after it apparently jammed in the chamber, O'Hara said. No specific motive was given; O'Hara described the shooter as having a "fascination" with mass shootings.

O'Hara said a significant amount of evidence has been collected through search warrants at three residences associated with the shooter. He said it is clear that the shooter's actions were "to obtain notoriety."

The shooter had an obsession with the idea of killing children, according to Joseph Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota.

"I won't dignify the shooter's words by repeating them," Thompson said. "They are horrific and vile, but in short, the shooter wanted to watch children suffer."

Advocates and other state legislators joined Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in a joint call today for legislative reform on guns.

Frey urged Minneapolis politicians to lead the call to ban assault weapons, saying the issue has not moved in years at any level.

"We need action at the federal level. We need action at the state level," Frey said. "We need coordination with the cities around the country to make sure that every person has this common foundation of safety where they can send their kid off to school and have the confidence that they will be safe."

Leah Kondes, of the local chapter of Moms Demand Action, described such firearms as weapons of war, which Omar addressed in her own speech. Omar reminded the crowd that she survived war in her native country, Somalia, when she was a child.

"I'd never imagined that I come to the United States and be in high school and that there would be a school shooting and that I, myself and my kids to come would practice school drills on how to avoid being gunned down in one of the greatest nations in the world," Omar said. "There is something fundamentally broken."

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency has gathered information and evidence in the shooting "demonstrating this was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology."

He said the shooter left anti-Catholic and anti-religious references both in her "manifesto" and written on her firearms, as well as an "explicit call for violence against President Trump" written on a firearm magazine, Patel said.

The shooter also "expressed hatred and violence toward Jewish people," with writings such as "Israel must fall" and "Free Palestine," as well as using "explicit language" relating to the Holocaust.

Patel said that the investigation continues and that the FBI will provide updates when available.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET) to discuss yesterday's shooting.

Federal, state, county and local law enforcement officers will discuss the response and the investigation.

The news conference will be in the press room of the Minneapolis Police Department.

The suspect was often sent to the principal's office for disciplinary discussions because she had been disruptive in her classroom at Annunciation Catholic School, according to a former employee.

The former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Westman usually seemed nonchalant about her meetings with the principal, although she appeared nervous on occasion.

Westman did not seem to have any friends at the school during her eighth-grade year, the ex-employee said.

The suspect's mother, Mary Grace Westman, who worked at Annunciation Catholic Church, expressed concern about her child's behavioral and social issues, the former employee said.

Years later, the suspect's mother told the former employee that Robin had come out as transgender and identified as a girl.

“She said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about this.’ I think she was struggling with her Catholic faith. ... She didn’t know how she felt, but it weighed heavily on her,” the former employee said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz today ordered the deployment of state law enforcement personnel to support public safety efforts around schools and places of worship after yesterday's shooting.

Walz authorized deploying 20 state personnel: 14 State Patrol troopers and six Department of Natural Resources enforcement officers.

"Students deserve to start the school year full of hope, excitement, maybe a little apprehension about what the year may bring," Walz said in a statement. "No child in America should go to school apprehensive of danger, of losing a classmate, of gunshots during prayer."

The statement added that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is "providing significant assistance to the Minneapolis Police Department with its investigation of the church shooting, and the BCA’s Violent Crime Enforcement Unit continues to work on other violent crime investigations in the city."

In the chaos after yesterday's shooting, frantic parents descended in droves on Annunciation Catholic School, desperate to reunite with their children. Among those who escorted them to their kids was Howard Dotson, an interfaith chaplain who had come to comfort families.

Dotson, founder of the nonprofit Trauma Recovery Survivors, said he saw dozens of parents who had walked from the crime scene tape that authorities had put up to the school gymnasium, where teachers took children after the massacre. Dotson described the parents as shocked when they arrived — their eyes darting around, desperate to see for themselves that their children were OK.

Once they spotted their kids, the emotions spilled out, Dotson said.

"The mothers were in tears, and there's no words. You just hug them," he said. "A lot of it was just the relief that they found each other."

But not every parent was so fortunate. Dotson said he also met with the mothers of the two children who were killed.

"That is the hardest, the wailing of a mother losing her child," he said.

At a news conference this morning, the interim CEO of Hennepin Healthcare, Thomas Klemond, said the hospital was currently treating nine patients injured in the school shooting. Of those, six — including five children — are in satisfactory condition.

Two people, one adult and one child, are in serious condition, and another child is in critical condition.

The first patient was at the hospital in under 10 minutes, hospital officials said of yesterday's quick response.

EMS Chief Marty Scherer said one child received a "shotgun blast to his back" while covering and protecting a fellow student.

Children’s Minnesota Hospital said three children remain in its care as of this morning. Four have been discharged, the hospital said in a press release.

Following yesterday's shooting in Minneapolis, the New York City Police Department is "deploying additional resources at houses of worship, specifically to churches," out of an “abundance of caution," a spokesperson said.

At this time, there is no known threat to New York City, the spokesperson added.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said this morning on MSNBC that he does not have any information about any previous mental illness of the shooter and that they were never confined for mental illness.

The person's criminal history was limited, aside from receiving one traffic ticket.

"That was this shooter's intent, to terrorize as many people as possible for their own personal gain," O'Hara said, noting that a motive in the shooting is still unclear.

Minnesota lawmakers "from every level of government," clergy members, and the Minnesota chapter of Moms Demand Action and other gun violence prevention advocates will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. local time today.

The presser at Minneapolis City Hall will honor the victims who were killed and injured yesterday and will act as a call to action to stop gun violence.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said officers are still trying to determine a motive in yesterday's shooting.

O'Hara told "TODAY" that police executed four search warrants yesterday, one for the church and three others at residences around the city. Officers did not find additional firearms, he said, but recovered "literally hundreds of pieces of evidence" that they are going through.

Some of that evidence includes additional writings that the FBI is helping officers go through, he said. Officers are also trying to obtain electronic search warrants to go through the shooter’s devices.

"The focus remains trying to go through everything that we possibly can, following all of the evidence to its logical conclusion, trying to determine what a potential motive there actually is for this shooting," he said.

He added: "Everything that we've seen so far is really a classic pathway to an active shooter."

A lot of the evidence points to "a whole lot of hate" against multiple groups, O'Hara said, but nothing specific in terms of motive yet for targeting this particular church.

Vincent Francoual, the father of an 11-year-old girl who survived the deadly shooting at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, shares how his daughter is coping a day after the shooting, saying that the family is taking her recovery one hour at a time.

Francoual said when the family got home after the shooting, he could "see the fear" in his daughter.Francoual said the family lives just blocks from the school, and that he walks his daughter to school every morning. Twenty minutes after dropping her off, his wife texted that there was a shooting at the church. He described knowing the situation was bad when he reapproached the school.

Their family is from France, and on a recent visit, they joked about moving there and leaving the U.S., Francoual said, something his daughter was not keen on.

But after the shooting, Francoual said his daughter said, "I want to move back to France. I don't want to go back to school."

He said he is not sure whether they will be in America this time next year.

"She thought she was going to die," Francoual said through tears. "She's having a guilt trip to have not done enough."

About a year ago, Francoual recalled telling his wife: "Every time we drop our kids at school, we just never know if they're going to be back."

"Something is wrong with the culture," Francoual continued. "Nobody does anything and everybody's going to go pray, thinking of us, but it's not going to fix the problem here."

Eighth grader Javen Willis said he "knew something was off" the moment he heard shots ring out at yesterday's Mass during the first week of school.

"I want to try to keep everybody as safe as possible," Javen, 13, recalled thinking.

He instructed two friends to get under the pew with him while he was in a "state of shock," he said, focused on trying to keep everybody around him safe.

While under the pew, he said he prayed, "and then I realized, I can't just sit here and focus on myself knowing that with God on my side, I would be fine, so I tried to just go and help out my fellow classmates, keep them calm and safe and let them know they would be OK."

On his way out of school, Javen was fist-bumping and thanking the officers who were helping at the scene.

"I didn't want to just sit there and think about it, so I just thanked the officers because without them, who knows how much worse this could have been," he said.

Javen's mom, Melissa Willis, said it was "terrifying" to learn there was a shooter at her son's school.

"You just never think this is going to be your reality," she said.

Through tears, Melissa Willis described reuniting with her son as he put his arm around her to comfort her.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said the suspect in the Catholic school shooting yesterday was a member of the church and a student at the school in the past. NBC News has previously reported that it appears that the suspect’s mother previously worked for the Church of Annunciation.

"Nothing that we have seen specific to trigger the amount of hate that occurred yesterday," O’Hara said on NBC’s "TODAY" show this morning.

O'Hara also said all injured victims are expected to survive, although some remain in critical condition. There is a "wide range of injuries," he said, from graze wounds to some "very, very serious, what we believe were life-threatening in the moment," injuries.

Five victims have so far been released from the hospital, O'Hara said.

O'Hara also said the school's protocol to lock the church doors once Mass began prompted the shooter to fire into the room from outside.

"We believe him not being able to get into the church likely saved countless lives," O'Hara said.

A prayer service "for Peace and Healing" will take place today at the Cathedral of St. Paul at 12 p.m. local time.

"May God bless our community with peace in our hearts and on our streets!" the Rev. Joseph R. Johnson said.

Local people have described the shock and heartache of the shooting at a church and school at the center of the community.

Alexandra Bienemann, a former Annunciation student, told NBC affiliate KARE 11 of Minneapolis: "It breaks my heart. Makes me sick to my stomach knowing that there's probably people I know that are either injured or maybe they were even killed."

Her father, Bill Bienemann, told the station that he heard between 30 and 50 shots fired during Mass yesterday. "I was shocked, I said there's no way that could be gunfire, there was so much of it. So it was sporadic, so it was a semi-automatic, it seemed like a rifle, certainly didn't sound like a handgun, and so he must have reloaded, you know, several times," he said.

The Minneapolis Foundation has set up a number for people to donate to victims of yesterday's shooting and their loved ones.

To donate, text ACF1 to 41444.

"The Minneapolis Foundation is hosting this fund and will work with the Annunciation community in the coming days and weeks to equitably distribute the funds to those affected," the city of Minneapolis said in a statement.

Police will provide extra patrols and visibility at Catholic schools and churches in the Los Angeles metro area today, Mayor Karen Bass said on X.

"The city remains vigilant in its efforts to keep Angelenos safe," she said.

The suspect who opened fire in Minneapolis on a Catholic school during Mass has been identified by authorities as a person in her early 20s who left behind videos online with disturbing content and writings that referred to suicide.

The suspect was identified as Robin Westman, 23.

The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after firing a rifle through the side windows of the Annunciation Catholic School’s church, aiming at children who were sitting in the pews, authorities said.

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The archbishop of Chicago called on the government to do more to protect the safety of the public from what he called the “curse of gun violence” — and said such violence is a threat to rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“The facts are clear. Guns are plentiful and common sense attempts to limit their availability have been largely rejected in the name of a freedom not found in our constitution,” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said in a statement after the shooting in Minneapolis.

“Cutbacks in funding for health care and social service programs will only exacerbate a national mental health crisis and increase alienation,” he wrote. “We therefore pray for those who hold the power to make the safety of our people a national priority.”

United in grief, around 3,000 members of the Minneapolis community gathered at the Academy of Holy Angels for a prayer service honoring the Annunciation Catholic School victims last night. Attendees expressed their respect and support for the victims.

"I wanted to be here for my friends who had family members who were impacted by it, to show that we all do really care and that we're here to support them through this really difficult time," one said.

Another, Ellie Mertens, a youth minister at the church, said: "I mean, we weren't able to muster up words, but clinging on to those kids, but just sobbing, walking over that church once we knew we were safe, just holding each other all shaken up."