Minneapolis gunman Robin Westman wrote a suicide note making a final appeal to their family and friends before carrying out the mass shooting that claimed the lives of two children. Westman has since been identified as the transgender daughter of a school employee.
Westman, 23, uploaded the note to a since-deleted YouTube page just hours before shooting through stained glass windows at children seated on the seats inside the church at Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday morning. Two children, ages eight and 10, were killed and at least 17 others were injured, including three adults and 14 children, in the attack, before Westman turned the pistol on herself, authorities said.
Final Confession
In the note, the shooter revealed the motive behind the Minneapolis attack, while apologizing to family and friends, and made one last request. "Pray for the victims and their families," Westman concluded her rambling note, despite having a rifle magazine labeled "For the children, hahahahahahaha."
In the earlier part of the letter, Westman described struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts for many years — struggles that appeared to worsen due to the belief that vaping had given her cancer.
"I was corrupted by this world and have learned to hate what life is," Westman wrote, adding that her parents had not failed her and that she believed they had "raised to be a good person."
"There is too much to accept, too many things to put with just to live," Westman continued. "I'm tired of the pain this world gives out."
The shooter continued by admitting they had "wanted this for so long" and acknowledged that carrying out the school attack was "wrong," yet claimed they were unable to stop themselves.
"I am not well, I am not right. I am a sad person, haunted by those things that do not go away,' Westman wrote, saying she had recently "lost all hope and decided to perform my final action against this world."
Opening Her Heart Out
Westman's sense of hopelessness appeared to deepen when she became convinced she was suffering from lung cancer — a fate the shooter described as a "tragic ending" since it was "completely self-inflicted."
"I did this to myself, as I cannot control myself and have been destroying my body through vaping and other means," Westman explains, noting that she has "felt many pains that make me think I am past the point of recovery.
"I do not want to recover - I do not want to throw my life away by rotting in a hospital bed. I don't want the rest of my life to be as a cancer patient, in and out of hospitals, constantly being fretted about with people afraid to be too happy around me.
"F*** that! I want to go out on my own means," the shooter explains.
"Unfortunately, due to my depression, anger and twisted mind, I want to fulfill a final act that has been in the back of my head for years."
For most of the remaining letter, Westman offered apologies to her family and friends while urging them to find a way to move forward.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara told reporters at a press conference that Westman, who died at the scene, was not known to the police.
The insane shooter had the words "kill Donald Trump" and "for the children" scribbled on gun magazines and posted chilling videos on his since-deleted YouTube account, including pages of his sick handwritten manifesto.
The majority of the twisted messages were written in code. The Westmans live in a modest Tudor-style house in a peaceful neighborhood with trees less than a mile from Annunciation.
