By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – According to local police and media reports on Thursday the transgender mass shooter who attacked a Catholic church in Minneapolis also had a chilling hate message for India.
In one of the weapons, the shooter had written, “Nuke India”, and above that in misspelt Russian, “Kill yourself”, and showed them off on a video uploaded to social media before the attack on Wednesday.
Two children, 8 and 10 were killed, and 17 people were injured in the attack on the church as the pupils of the church’s school were at a mass to mark the opening of the academic year.
Three of those killed were people in their 80s who had come for the mass, police said.
The shooter, identified by police as Robin Westman, shot herself after firing into the church through a stained-glass window.
The killer had completed eighth grade at the school as a boy named Robert Westman in 2017, according to a school publication, before declaring himself to be a transgender girl and legally changing his name in 2020.
In the video she had uploaded, she showed several hate messages, including “Kill Donald Trump now,” that she had written on several weapons she used.
The killer sounded like a White Supremacist, the killer also had hate messages against Latinos, African Americans, Jews and Israel.
The videos she uploaded were taken down at the request of the police, but copies were available on social media, and discovered the anti-India writing while scanning the video.
The video’s authenticity was confirmed by Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, who referred in an X post to some of the writings found on the weapons seen in the video.
“This deeply sick murderer scrawled the words ‘For the Children’ and ‘Where is your God?’ and ‘Kill Donald Trump’ on a rifle magazine,” Noem posted.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel said on X that his agency was investigating the shooting as domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.
This is the second incident of a transgender person attacking a Christian institution in two years.
A transgender man, who was born female, carried out a mass shooting at a Christian school in 2023, killing three 9-year-old children and three adults.
Aiden Hale, who as a girl had attended the Covenant School run by the Presbyterian Christian sect in Nashville, Tennessee, was shot dead by police who responded to the attack.
The latest attack on a place of worship and on children had reverberations around the US and across the world.
In a telegram sent to the local archbishop by the Vatican, Pope Leo condsoled the deaths and sent his “blessing as a pledge of peace, fortitude and consolation in the Lord Jesus.”
Trump said on Truth Social, “Please join me in praying for everyone involved”, and ordered flags to fly at half-mast till Sunday on all government buildings and US diplomatic missions as a mark of respect to “the victims of the senseless acts of violence”.
Trump’s latest domestic campaign is fighting violence in US cities.
He has ordered federal and military personnel to patrol Washington and has threatened to send them to other high-crime cities like Chicago in a measure that would challenge the Constitution, as it doesn’t have a provision for the President’s rule or takeover of local functions in states.
Minneapolis has been inundated with bloody violence, and, according to police, the church shooting was the fourth since Tuesday, one of them near a high school close to the church.
Local media reported that 5 people were killed and 25 were hurt in the incidents.
A gunman killed former Democratic State House of Representatives Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in a Minneapolis suburb in June and seriously injured a state senator and his wife.
US government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom, the State Department and the US media self-righteously criticize other countries for attacks on Catholic institutions while the US itself has a record of similar religious violence.
US Catholic Bishops’ Conference showed at least 390 attacks on the minority Christian sect since 2020.
