Manifesto, videos from Minneapolis suspect praised mass killers, fixated on school shootings

The shooter who opened fire on the Minneapolis Catholic school children while they attended a church service published two videos before the Wednesday attack in which someone stabs a drawing of the inside of a church with a knife, glorifies mass killers and fixates on school shootings.

The videos were posted to YouTube by an account attributed to Robin Westman and include racist, antisemitic and anti-Christian phrases and symbols, as well as calls to kill President Donald Trump and destroy the state of Israel.

Police Chief Brian O’Hara said police are still trying to determine a motive for the attack that killed two children and injured 17 other children and adults.

O’Hara confirmed that the videos were posted by Westman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene.

The person, whose face is not shown in the videos, seemed to outline plans for the shootings at Annunciation Church.

“I can’t wait to kill and kill and kill and kill,” the person says repeatedly in one roughly 20-minute video. Another frequent refrain: “I fall apart, I break and I die.”

In another video, a person displays four guns, a bevy of ammunition, a letter to family and friends, and clothing the narrator apparently planned to wear “tomorrow.”

Other names on the weapons appear to refer to the Ruby Ridge standoff in Idaho and the siege of a religious compound in Waco, Texas, two incidents that to many anti-government extremists symbolize government violence.

“There is no message,” reads a note written in white on a black handgun.

The videos include an array of political ideology and extremist views. In one, the person shows off a canister labeled with the name of a man who bombed a fertility clinic in Florida this year, as well as the phrase “Jew gas.” A wooden plank with another canister and similar phrases referring to online memes about marijuana and internet trolls.

One gun magazine read “kill Donald Trump.” Another said: “I’m the woker, why so queerious?” That is an apparent play on the villainous character the Joker from “Batman.”

The person invoked the names of a multinational investment company, an oil company and a beer company, as well as a Second Amendment activist running for Congress in Texas. (That activist denounced the killings on social media.)

At one point in the videos, the person says: “Nothing makes me want to stop my plans.”

The videos are also full of stickers, symbols, drawings and handwriting in English and what appears to be the Cyrillic alphabet.

One sticker is for a German band that has been cited by other school shooters, according to CNN. (The band told that news outlet last year that its music stands against violence.)

Another sticker says “Defend Equality” with a machine gun overlaid on a pride flag, and many stickers depict the video game character Luigi. That could be a reference to Luigi Mangione, the man charged with killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare last year.

There are drawings of guns, including one pointing at a face that the person in the video stabs with a knife. Beneath the person’s books is a diagram of gun parts along with the handgun label for a Ruger Mark IV.

Some of the writings are dated, as if they are journal entries, starting in late May and running through this month.

Giulia Dossi, a visiting assistant professor of Russian language and area studies at St. Olaf College, verified the transliteration of the writings scribbled in the Cyrillic alphabet, which sounds like English when read out loud. A few Russian words are sprinkled into the writing.

The writings, like other things in the videos, show fascination and reverence for school shooters, particularly Adam Lanza, who murdered children at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut.

The message says Sandy Hook was Westman’s first exposure to school shootings and that Westman likes “shooters who know what they are doing” and plan for “violence and mass death.”

Westman’s apparent writings also show a racist admiration for mass killers who targeted Black people, such as Dylann Roof, the Charleston, S.C., gunman.

“All these events and stories have only fueled a fire in me to do it right,” the journal said.