The Annunciation Catholic School Shooter Wanted Fame and Nothing More

The victims of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis have now been identified as 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski. Both were killed when Robin Westman opened fire on children gathered for Mass. Authorities say that the other children injured in the attack ranged in age from 6 to 15, along with three elderly parishioners who were also wounded.

What sets this tragedy apart from many others is how investigators describe Westman’s fixation. According to officials, the shooter was obsessed with killing children. That appears to have been their sole purpose: to inflict as much pain and death on defenseless kids as possible.

In the aftermath, investigators and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have been analyzing the writings and markings left behind. Westman scrawled dozens of names and phrases on their weapons, referencing past killers including the Columbine shooters, the 2007 Jokela school shooter in Finland, the 2012 Sandy Hook shooter, the 2018 Kerch Polytechnic shooter in Crimea, the 2019 Christchurch terrorist in New Zealand, the 2022 Buffalo shooter, the 2022 Highland Park parade shooter, the 2024 Abundant Life shooter, the 2025 Palm Springs fertility clinic bomber, and even the 2025 Antioch shooter. It was a roll call of infamy designed to mimic the aesthetics of mass violence.

One phrase Westman wrote on their rifle, “Where is your God?,” ties back to a story often repeated about Columbine. The myth goes that one of the gunmen asked a victim if she believed in God before shooting her. The accuracy of that story has long been debated, but it has taken on symbolic weight in Columbiner spaces online. And that gets to the heart of what is really going on here. The so-called True Crime Community, or TCC, that Westman appeared to have been a part of is nothing more than Columbiners by another name. These are people who elevate mass killers to cult status, who obsess over their writings, videos, and aesthetics, and who find belonging in communities that revolve around idolizing violence.

Westman’s writings reveal just how much of this was performative. In their journal, written partly in Cyrillic script, they referred to their attack as their “art” and their “masterpiece,” describing the killings as the “perfect way to say goodbye.” This was never about ideology in any coherent sense. It was about infamy. It was about shock value. It was about being remembered in the same breath as the killers they idolized.

One difficult question that emerges from this case is why some LGBTQ+ people may find themselves drawn to Columbiner culture. Westman, who legally changed their name from Robert to Robin in 2020 and was referred to by some federal officials as transgender, appeared to be seeking identity and belonging in the same way that Columbiners do. Many LGBTQ+ people know the pain of alienation, rejection, and intolerance, and perhaps some find an echo of that experience in the way the Columbine shooters were mislabeled as outcasts. The reality, of course, is that those shooters were not the bullied loners the media once claimed. They had friends, they were not rejected, and their alienation was self-constructed. Yet the myth of the misunderstood outsider persists, and for some, it becomes a dangerous point of identification.

The tragedy at Annunciation shows the lethal consequences of that fixation. Children as young as six were shot during Mass. Families are shattered. And once again, we are left to reckon with the fact that these acts are not only inspired by hate but also by a culture that continues to grant the killers the infamy they crave.

But in this case, Westman’s goal is destined to fail. We have endured so many shootings in this country that the shooter’s name will fade into obscurity. In the not-so-distant future, Robin Westman will not be remembered, but Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski will be. Their names will endure far longer than that of the coward who sought to kill children for attention.

Killers crave fame. Victims deserve remembrance. Don’t give cowards what they want.

(Sources)