Minneapolis – The bad news started at the beginning of the summer and never seemed to end in this corner of the Midwest Upper.
There was a deadly attack on state politicians in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The shots that broke out during a gathering in a popular picnic location, leaving a dead person and five injured. Tuesday, a shooter sprayed balls on a sidewalk behind a Catholic high school, killing a person and injuring six.
Then, Wednesday, the police invaded another Catholic school a few kilometers away.
In what Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara called a “truly unthinkable tragedy”, a shooter pulled in a church where some 200 children from the Catholic School of Annunciation were in the Mass. Two of them were killed and 18 people were injured.
“It was a difficult summer for Minnesota,” American lawyer Joe Thompson said on Thursday.
Even if most of the crime categories continue to fall to Minneapolis after an increase that followed the murder in 2020 of George Floyd, the season has seen a peak of violence that has led several times to armored vehicles that roll in the streets carrying the police in full combat equipment.
In the last violence, the shooter, who says that the authorities, were consumed by the thoughts of killing children, pulled more than 100 rounds through the stained glass windows of the church.
The authorities said that there was no clear reason, although Robin Westman, 23, who died by suicide at the church, left videos and writings that idolized mass killers and evacuated fury in a litany of humanity, from blacks to Mexicans via Christians.
“In short, the shooter seemed to hate us all,” said Thompson.
In the writings, Westman spoke of depth of depression and longtime plans to make a mass shot.
“I know it’s bad, but I keep stopping,” wrote Westman.
Thursday, seeking to reassure residents of Minneapolis, Governor Tim Walz ordered agents of the law enforcement of the state to work with the local police to monitor schools and churches.
“By meeting, the local and state police send a clear message: the inhabitants of Minneapolis are not alone,” said the commissioner of the Ministry of Public Security, Bob Jacobson, in a statement. “The loss of minneapolis is currently being felt in our whole state”, ”
This loss is something that Minneapolis felt several times this summer.
People were amazed when a man pretended to be a police officer chased a series of state legislators in the suburbs of Minneapolis in the early hours of June 14. Police said Vance Boelter deadly killed the former president of the Chamber, Melissa Hortman, 55, a long of the most prominent democrats in the state, with her husband, Mark. He would also have shot the Senator of the Democratic State John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, although the two survived.
Boelter, a father of five children of 57 years old and sometimes the Christian pastor, was arrested after the greatest search in state history. He admitted the killings in a handwritten letter, according to the authorities.
The motif remains clear. There were only clues in the list he brought from his objectives, massively democrats, and a disjointed letter with claims of secret military training and missions around the world.
But the push of violence, say here, do not define life in a city where families have often been for generations.
“I have the impression that Minneapolis is deeply misunderstood,” said Tess Rada, whose 8 -year -old daughter is witnessing Annunciation, survived the shooting and was friends with one of the children killed.
“There are so many good people than bad people,” said Rada, who enters a data entry for a printing company and directs the theater productions of the college.
Vincent Francoual’s sixth year daughter was also in the church. She escaped by turning down and hiding in a room with a table pressed against the door.
Francoual was born in France but lived in Minneapolis for most of his life. Even before the shooting, he said, he was increasingly concerned about what he called the “fever of firearms” in America.
“I told my wife a year ago that it was a country where your children will bring you to school without knowing if you are going to recover them,” said Francoual. “She thought I was a little dramatic. And what do you know? It happened. ”
Francoual said he was already preparing for the Annunciation and Minneapolis to be plunged into polarizing conversation on crime and armed violence in major cities.
“Minneapolis is a big city,” he said, no matter what Washington politicians say. “It is a big city in which to live.”
School has always been a strong community source for French, families helping with children and holidays together.
“Even if we are in a big city,” he said, “it could be a school in a small town.”
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The editors of the Jack Dura associated press in Bismarck, Dakota du Nord and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed.
