Robin Westman — the now-deceased 22-year-old murderer who killed two children and injured 17 others (including 14 children) during a Wednesday morning shooting at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota — has been identified as transgender by The New York Post and social media posts, though police have not yet publicly confirmed this detail.
As in the past, anti-LGBTQ+ right-wingers are already using the shooter’s possible identity to vilify all trans people as mentally ill and a danger to children and society.
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Westman — armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol — shot dozens of rounds through the church windows at children seated in the pews starting around 8:30 a.m. local time. The shooter then killed themselves in the back of the church parking lot, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said, according to the Associated Press. Many of those injured remain hospitalized in critical condition.
“This was a deliberate act of violence against innocent children and other people worshipping. The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” O’Hara said during a news briefing.
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Mayor Jacob Frey said, “There are no words that can capture the horror and the evil of this unspeakable act. Children are dead.”
Local news station WBFF cited social media accounts describing Westman as trans. One X user posted court documents allegedly showing that Westman legally changed their name to Robin at age 17, “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.” At the time, Westman’s mother reportedly worked at the school but retired in 2021.
Amid these reports, Minneapolis Mayor Frey said, “I have heard about a whole lot of hate that’s being directed at our trans community. Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. Kids died. This needs to be about them.”
“While we still don’t know all the facts about what happened in Minneapolis, we must be clear on one key element: to scapegoat an entire marginalized community in a moment of such intense national grief is wrong, dangerous, and dehumanizing,” Wolf said. He added that the undeniable crisis is the broader epidemic of gun violence that continues to claim lives across the country.
Echoing those sentiments, Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf said, “While we still don’t know all the facts about what happened in Minneapolis, we must be clear on one key element: to scapegoat an entire marginalized community in a moment of such intense national grief is wrong, dangerous, and dehumanizing.”
Wayne Besen, executive director of the anti-conversion therapy organization Truth Wins Out said, “Let us be perfectly clear: This monstrous act of violence was committed by one profoundly disturbed individual. It is both defamatory and dangerous to use this tragedy to smear transgender people as a whole. The shooter’s gender identity played no role in these horrific murders. Westman was a deranged lunatic, not a representative of an entire community that already faces disproportionate levels of stigma, violence, and discrimination.”
Shooter linked to disturbing racist video manifesto
The New York Post also linked Westman to a 20-minute YouTube video in which the shooter allegedly showed ammunition cartridges upon which are written “F**k everything that you stand for,” “Suck on this!”, “Where is your God?”, “for the children”, and “kill Donald Trump.”
Journal notes, written in Russian, state, “I have had thoughts about mass murder for a long time. I am very conflicted with writing this journal,” and “[I imagine] being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids.”
Other pages in the journal reportedly had the following writing: “I am feeling good about annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy… Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church. I think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan… Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.”
In other pages, she reportedly wrote that her “favorite” school shooting was the Sandy Hook School massacre, which killed 20 children and six adults. Other messages shown in the video contained racial slurs and far-right slogans, as well as “Hail Breivik. Hail Brenton.” Neo-Nazi Anders Breivik killed 77 people in a 2011 Norway shooting, and Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people in two separate 2019 shootings at two New Zealand mosques.
Right wingers are already blaming trans identity for the tragedy
The shooter’s alleged trans identity was immediately mentioned by Libs of TikTok, an anti-LGBTQ+ social media account run by Chaya Raichik. Numerous commenters have made transphobic remarks, blaming the shooting on Westman’s trans identity.
The shooting has reinforced transphobic talking points about trans people being mentally ill and a danger to kids and public safety, even though the overwhelming majority of school shootings in the U.S. have been carried out by cisgender men.
Anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X, “Today’s evil church school shooter was a trans who was likely groomed and transitioned as a teenager. Congress MUST PASS my bill Protecting Children’s Innocence Act to make it a FELONY to perform sex change surgeries and all forms of medications on minors!!!”
Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson wrote, “One thing is VERY clear: the trans movement is radicalizing the mentally ill into becoming violent terrorists who target children for murder…. Radical gender ideology is driving violence and targeting innocent people. Enough excuses. Enough denial. The threat is real, and it’s escalating. Time for a national intervention.”
Today’s evil church school shooter was a trans who was likely groomed and transitioned as a teenager.
Congress MUST PASS my bill Protecting Children’s Innocence Act to make it a FELONY to perform sex change surgeries and all forms of medications on minors!!!
According to court… pic.twitter.com/RkcQEwxEAn
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) August 27, 2025
The LGB Courage Coalition, an anti-trans group, wrote in a statement, “Gender ideology may not cause violence directly, but it preys on the vulnerable. When fragile individuals are denied evidence-based mental health care and instead encouraged to affirm delusions, instability follows.”
“Parents see with clarity what institutions and ideologues often deny: that gender ideology does not offer a path to mental health, stability, or alignment with reality. Instead, it fosters confusion, isolates vulnerable youth, and often cuts them off from the very people who love them most,” the group added before calling for more anti-trans laws “to protect minors from gender ideology.”
Such laws usually involve denying trans kids lifesaving transitional medical care, denying any legal recognition of trans people’s existence, and ending trans-inclusive school policies that allow children to use names, pronouns, restrooms, and join sports teams matching their gender identity. All major psychological associations agree that policies like these worsen trans youths’ emotional well-being.
Trans people will likely fear a backlash over the shooter’s alleged gender identity
A similar incident occurred in March 2023 when a trans individual killed three children and three adults in a shooting at the Covenant School, a private Presbyterian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
At the time, then Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused gun-toting trans people of threatening political violence against Christians, a group that trans people regard as “natural enemies,” he said. Similarly, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) argued that the shooting was a “hate crime” against Christians
In response, the local trans community worried about retaliatory violence from angry community members.
Aislinn Bailey, the acting president of the Johnson City-based trans-led advocacy group Tri-Cities Transgender, criticized police for mentioning the shooter‘s gender identity despite the initial uncertainty surrounding it.
“I think it was unethical and highly suspect that information like that, which they had to have known could cause backlash on the trans community — releasing information like that without it being verified, that’s unconscionable as far as I’m concerned,” Bailey told NBC News, adding, “We were already fearing for our lives. Now, it’s even worse.”
Denise Sadler, a trans drag performer, told NBC News, “You don’t know if [the shooter’s gender identity] is going to trigger a community of people who already hated us to come and try to shoot us to prove a point.”
At the time, a CNN analyst called out conservatives blaming the shooting on trans people. Instead of focusing on the suspected shooter’s gender identity, the analyst said it’s important to look at the larger issues of mental health, protecting children, fortifying schools, firearm safety reforms, and other topics that contribute more to shootings.
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