Tapper Clarifies Minn. Shooter’s Name: Since She Identifies as a Female, It’s Now Robin Westman

TAPPER: “What else are we learning about the shooter?”
Todd: “Jake, we‘ve obtained significant new information on the shooter. Here‘s what we can tell you right now. The FBI has identified the shooter as Robin Westman, 23 years old. The agency is calling this ‘an act of domestic terrorism,’ but the police say they do not have a motive yet to establish it as a hate crime. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O‘Hara says Westman has no prior criminal history. The shooter was armed with a rifle, shotgun and a pistol, which the police chief said all were obtained recently and legally, they were purchased by the shooter. According to a yearbook obtained by CNN, Westman graduated from Annunciation Catholic grade school in 2017. According to a social media post, Westman‘s mother previously worked at Annunciation from 2016 through 2021. Police are investigating, as Whitney pointed out a moment ago, online videos apparently posted by the shooter, which describe an obsession with school shootings. The videos show a rambling written statement with guns painted with slurs, with the names of mass killers, including the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012, and also some political messages in that rambling written statement. In the videos, which are titled with Westman‘s full name, the person recording them pages through this handwritten notebook. The notebook describes feelings of self-hatred and wishes to die, and the words ‘I‘m so sorry’ are written in large letters on one page. The notebook also includes a diagram of the inside of a church, which appears to match the layout of Annunciation Catholic Church. The person recording shows themselves stabbing a knife into that drawing of the layout of that church, while saying the words ‘Ha! Nice. Jake, you know, again, piecing together this information, all of it incredibly disturbing. And again, as I think people have been pointing out since this happened, you know, you see obviously some real clues here as to what a motive could be, but they‘re not saying formally what it is yet.”
TAPPER: “The Minneapolis Star Tribune, just as another piece of the puzzle as to who the shooter was, the Minneapolis Star Tribune says, according to court records, because there‘s been some confusion about what the shooter‘s name was, Robin Westman‘s mother applied to change her child‘s name in 2019. It was at one point Robert Paul Westman, but since she identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification was underage, it‘s now Robin Westman.”