More than seven years before Robin Westman opened fire on a Catholic school as Mass was underway, killing two children and injuring 17 more worshippers, police were called to a townhouse in the Twin Cities suburb where the shooter lived with her mother.
The heavily redacted police report obtained by NBC News from the police department in Eagan, Minnesota, is dated Jan. 26, 2018, and contains a two-word description explaining why an officer was dispatched to that address: mental health.
It also contains a brief synopsis that reads “assisted Mendota Heights with a check welfare of a juvenile.” Mendota Heights is another Twin Cities suburb.
The name of that juvenile and what exactly prompted police to be summoned to the three-bedroom home on Crane Creek Lane were blacked out in the report.
Two years prior to the mental health call, police responded to a report of a “criminal offense” at the residence, according to a police report. But beyond noting that the case was closed, all the details describing the event have been blacked out.
Investigators probing Wednesday’s deadly mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis continue to search for a clear motive to explain why Westman, 23, committed the act of terror.
Westman, who died by suicide after the shooting, was a trans woman and had been a student at Annunciation. Her mother, Mary Grace Westman, had once worked at the school.
Minnesota has a red flag law that went into effect in January 2024, allowing family members and others to petition the courts to have guns removed from a person they believe poses a threat to themselves or the community. The state passed a law in 2023 requiring gun buyers to pass universal background checks and to obtain permits for pistols or semiautomatic military-style assault weapons.
But it doesn’t appear any alarms were sounded as Westman amassed an arsenal that included the rifle, pistol and shotgun used in the attack on the church.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Thursday that they do not have information indicating that Westman suffered from mental illness and, other than a traffic ticket, she did not have a police record.
“There is nothing in the investigation so far that would lead us to believe that anything was missed,” O’Hara said.
The shooter, he said, was able to “lawfully purchase these weapons.”
O’Hara added that Westman’s family has been cooperating with investigators, but they have not yet located his mother, who lives in another state. Records show her residence as being in Florida.
FBI Minneapolis Special Agent in Charge Alvin M. Winston Sr. said the agency had not had any previous contact with the shooter.
“We did a check of all of our holdings, the FBI holdings and he was not in our holdings prior to this incident so we didn’t have anything on him at that time,” Winston said.
In the aftermath of the mass shooting, FBI Director Kash Patel called the attack on the church “an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology.”
And police are reviewing the online videos, in which the shooter scrawled racial slurs, a homophobic slur, antisemitic messages, a call for President Donald Trump’s death and references to the Holocaust and the Catholic Church.
In addition, the video showed the suspect flipping through the pages of a journal written in English but using the Cyrillic alphabet. At times uttering “koshmar,” which is the Russian word for nightmare, the shooter discusses the mechanics of mass school shootings and suicide.
A person who went to Minneapolis’ Southwest High School with the shooter and described her as “a bit of a strange person with a dark sense of humor” said she never heard Westman make any jokes about shootings or guns. But she often mumbled in what the person believed was Russian, said the former classmate, who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons.
“People would ask what she was saying and she would just tell them, ‘Oh nothing,’” the person recalled.
“Yesterday’s events were very shocking to everyone who knew her in school and the entire Minneapolis community,” the former classmate said. “Many people do and say strange things in their teenage years so many people just saw it as her just trying to be ‘edgy’ or ‘funny.’ It’s very hard to see the videos of what she planned and carried out. I was never very close with her but this is still very heavy on my heart.”
Westman, in the journal, said she first began pondering mass murder in the seventh grade. In particular, she was fixated on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut.
She writes that she has a history of making threats about violence. In another part of the journal, she writes about how easy it would be to buy a gun and mentions that she has dropped warning signs to people, asking for help.
Westman’s parents, who are divorced, have yet to make a public statement about the shooting. Neither could be reached for comment.
Westman was 11 when her mother and father, James Westman, divorced in 2013. At the time, she and her brother and sister lived with their parents in Hastings, another Twin Cities suburb.
Police were called to that residence at least four times between 2003 and 2016, including once for a welfare check for an adult female, a sibling, who was threatening suicide in 2014. Also in 2014, police responded to a report of vandalism at the home. Arriving officers saw several offensive words and pictures written on windows of the garage and the father’s car.
Another call in 2010 related to a “juvenile problem” with a 17-year-old daughter who was “out of control.” But nothing in the records indicates that these incidents involved the shooter.
When the shooter was living in Eagan, she was still using her birth name. She didn’t become Robin M. Westman until age 17 when, records show, the name change application was granted in January 2020 in Dakota County, Minnesota.
While Westman’s parents signed off on the name change, her mother expressed conflicted feelings about her child’s gender identity, said a former school employee when asked what they remembered about the family. They spoke to NBC on the condition of anonymity so they could speak freely about family issues.
“She said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about this’,” the ex-employee said. “I think she was struggling with her Catholic faith… She didn’t know how she felt, but it weighed heavily on her.”
The ex-employee also remembered that Westman was often sent to the principal’s office for disruptive behavior and didn’t seem to have any friends. Westman’s mother expressed concern about her child’s behavioral and social issues, the ex-employee said.
Faced with punishment from school administrators, Westman appeared alternately nervous and nonchalant, the former employee said.
