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 school at Annunciation Catholic School, a private elementary school with about 395 students.
Authorities confirmed that two children, ages eight and 10 years old were killed, and 17 others were injured, 14 of them children and two of whom are in critical condition.
The gunman, who has not been identified but police described as a man in his early twenties, was wearing all black and carried a rifle, a pistol and a shotgun.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara said authorities believed the gunman fired all three weapons, and the shooting appeared to have mostly been done from outside the church. Some of the doors to the church had also been barricaded from outside.
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.”
A motive was not immediately known, and the gunman died by suicide at the rear of the church, the police chief said.
“The coward who fired these shots ultimately took his own life in the rear of the church,” O’Hara said.
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