One of the victims of the school church shooting in Minneapolis has been identified with his father making an emotional statement to the media.
Fletcher Merkel, 8, was one of two Catholic school students killed when 23-year-old Robin Westman opened fire in a church while students from Annunciation Catholic School celebrated mass on Wednesday local time.
Fletcher’s father Jesse Merkel identified his son as one of the victims on Thursday.
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“Yesterday, a coward decided to take our eight-year-old son Fletcher away from us,” he said.
“We will never be allowed to hold him, talk to him, play with him and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming.”
Jesse said his son loved his family and friends as well as fishing, cooking and sports.
“While the hole in our hearts and lives will never be filled, I hope that in time, our family can find healing,” he said.
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 when the shooting occurred.
The other two were not injured, Olson said.
A 10-year-child was also killed in the shooting.
Jesse said he prayed that the family of the victim could find some semblance of healing one day, as well.
He asked that people remember Fletcher for who he was as a person and not the action that ended his life.
“I’ve heard many stories accounting the swift and heroic actions of children and adults alike from inside the church,” Jesse said.
“Without these people and their selfless actions, this could have been a tragedy of many magnitudes more. For these people, I am thankful.”
Authorities said Westman once attended Annunciation Catholic School and was “obsessed” with the idea of killing children.
Acting US Attorney Joe Thompson said videos and writings the shooter left behind show that the shooter “expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable”.
The only group Westman did not hate was “mass murderers and shooters,” Thompson said.
Investigators recovered hundreds of pieces of evidence from the church and three residences, the police chief said.
They found more writings from the suspect but no additional firearms or a clear motive for the attack on the church the shooter once attended.
“No evidence will ever be able to make sense of such an unthinkable tragedy,” Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said.
City officials on Thursday increased to 15 the number of wounded children — aged six to 15 — in addition to three parishioners in their 80s who were also injured.
One child was in critical condition on Thursday while 11 other victims remained in hospitals.
Westman, whose mother worked for the parish before retiring in 2021, left behind several videos and page upon page of writings describing a litany of grievances.
One read: “I know this is wrong but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
O’Hara said Westman was armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol and died by taking his own life.
On a YouTube channel, videos that police say may have been posted by the shooter show weapons and ammunition, and list the names of mass shooters.
What appears to be a suicide note to family contains a confession of long-held plans to carry out a shooting and talk of being deeply depressed.
Reverend Dennis Zehren, who was inside the church with the nearly 200 children, said the responsorial psalm — which spoke of light in the darkness — had almost ended when he heard someone yell, “Down down, everybody down,” and gunshots rang out.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the attack was an act of domestic terrorism motivated by hate-filled ideology, citing the shooter’s statements against multiple religions and calls for violence against US President Donald Trump.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz on Thursday sent state law enforcement officers to schools and churches in Minneapolis, saying no child should go to school worried about losing a classmate or gunshots erupting during prayer.
On a YouTube channel titled Robin W, the person filming the video points to two windows in what appears to be a drawing of the church and then stabs it with a long knife.
The now-deleted videos also show weapons and ammunition, scrawled with “kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” along with the names of past mass shooters.
There also were hundreds of pages written in Cyrillic, a centuries-old script still used in Slavic countries.
In one, Westman wrote, “When will it end?”
There were no past arrests or anything in the shooter’s background that would have prevented Westman from being able to legally purchase a firearm, investigators said on Thursday.
Federal officials referred to Westman as transgender, and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey decried hatred being directed at “our transgender community”.
In 2020, a judge approved a petition, signed by Westman’s mother, asking for a name change from Robert to Robin, saying the petitioner “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification”.
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