Minneapolis – Mike Garrity walked home from the gym on Wednesday morning when he heard a series of strong noises that initially thought they came from a nail gun in a construction site.
But when Garrity approached the Annunciation Catholic Church, he realized that something terrible had happened.
Garrity, 64, who lives on the other side of Church Street and the next Catholic Elementary School, saw a dozen children crying from school. At least three of them were covered with blood, he said in a telephone interview.
He saw adults who seemed to be members of the school’s faculty or personnel. “Don’t enter there,” said one of them.
Garrity soon learned that a person had opened fire during a morning mass. The suspect, identified by the Federal Police as Robin Westman, killed at least two children and wounded another 17, including 14 children. Westman died of a self -inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Weston Halsne, 10 years old, a fifth grade student at school, told NBC Kare that his friend Victor was shot while lying on him.
Weston said he ran under a bank while the shots crossed the stained glass and covered their heads, an active shooting tactic that the school practiced regularly. But students had never practiced such exercise in the church, he added.
Halsne’s father, Grant, said the shooter shot the church glass from outside the building.
“This was the third day of school,” Grant Halsne told NBC News as he left the scene. “It’s just a cowardly act. He’s quite sick.”
The Reverend Bob Hart, an interim pastor in Annunciation, said that violence was practically inconceivable for him.
“It is difficult to believe that this could happen in a Catholic Mass,” said Hart, 77, who described the Church and school as a “very united and very supportive community.”
Hart said he didn’t know the identities of the victims. But if they are made public, he added, he hopes to recognize many of the names.
In an interview, a nearby resident said he ran to cover himself after hearing shots; Another was inside his house and told his daughter to enter the basement of her house for fear of being hit by a rebound.
Andrew Winchell was on his porch, approximately one block from the church, when he heard penetrating noises that he also confused with a nail gun.
“It was this incredibly strong and repeated ‘pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, then one pause, then another’ pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop ‘.
Agents with the alcohol, tobacco office, firearms and explosives recovered at least one firearm from the scene, and are starting the tracking protocol, according to an ATF source in Minneapolis.
It is not yet known if the suspect legally obtained the weapons or if they had an extensive criminal history.
Parents and other members of the Annunciation community converged in the Church on Wednesday to meet their loved ones. The parents, some crying, walked from school, squeezed their children in their hands or brought them on their shoulders.
The father of two children attending school said he was at work when he received a text message from his wife. She said the shots had been shot, and only one of her children had been located.
“I immediately left the job,” said the father, who would only give his first name, Tyler, while talking to NBC News from outside school. “It was a nervous disaster. I was surprised and it was incredulous that this was happening in Annunciation. I could not get here quick enough.”
He finally met with his two children.
Reverend Erich Rutten, a Roman Catholic priest whose parish is close to the announcement, entered school to offer support to families that try to make sense of the tragedy.
Rutten said he saw the parents in “great, great anxiety and pain”, including some who were “crying and crying, some crouching to the ground,” he said. He hugged the people he recognized.
Then he began to pray the rosary, and others joined. “We are asking God to help in this situation,” Rutten said.
Natasha Korecki reported from Minneapolis and Daniel Arkin in New York.
