People gather at Lynhurst Park where a candle light vigil was being held for the victims of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis. (Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Over 100 people gathered across the street from the children’s ward at Minneapolis’ Hennepin County Medical Center to pray for the kids recovering there after they were shot at the Annunciation Catholic School this week.
Teachers, students and nurses, as well as police officers who had heard about the Thursday night candlelight vigil over their dispatch radios, all joined together for a moment of silence, united in a shared sense of grief and hope after Wednesday’s mass shooting.
“This is every nurse/mother’s worst nightmare, and worst fear come true,” a flyer for the vigil said. “We’d like anyone who is interested to come join us to light up [Minneapolis] with candlelight, love, and support, for the kids, their families and our staff.”
One of those victims is 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, who is in critical condition after undergoing surgery. It’s a tragedy that struck her entire family at once — her younger brother was inside Annunciation Catholic School at the time of the shooting and her mom is a pediatric nurse at the hospital where Sophia was admitted.
“Sofia’s mother was called into work, and only to find out when she arrived that her daughter was one of the victims, unfortunately,” Father Timothy Sas of St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church told ABC News.
“No priest is ever prepared enough to offer consolation for a moment like this,” he said.
He described Sophia as “luminous” and “bright,” an active student at school and in church.
“She’s pulled through, and we need about two, three days before they can understand what her future prognosis is,” he said.
Eighteen people — including 15 kids — were injured. All injured victims are expected to survive, police said.
The 23-year-old shooter, who previously attended the school, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. A motive remains unknown.
Former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a keynote address during the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala at the Palace Hotel on April 30, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump revoked Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by ABC News.
The executive memorandum was issued Thursday afternoon by Trump, who sent it to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, according to a senior official.
“You are hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by Executive Memorandum, beyond those required by law, for the following individual effective September 1, 2025: Former Vice President Kamala D. Harris,” the White House memorandum to the Secretary of Homeland Security states.
Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden extended Harris’ protective detail an additional year — on top of the six months she is required by law to have a Secret Service detail as the former vice president, according to multiple officials.
A senior White House official confirmed to ABC News that Trump revoked Secret Service protection for Harris via the letter.
The official highlighted that vice presidents “typically only have a detail for six months.”
This is just the latest protection detail the president has canceled early. In March, he canceled former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’ detail, along with the details of the Biden children, John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The Vice President is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety,” Kristen Allen, a senior advisor to Harris, said in a statement to ABC News.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appears speaks with ABC News while appearing on “Good Morning America,” Aug. 29, 2025. ABC News
(NEW YORK) — House Speaker Mike Johnson, on “Good Morning America” on Friday, weighed in on turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Minneapolis school shooting and what’s next for Congress on the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Johnson defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after a mass exodus at the CDC spurred by the administration’s termination of the agency’s director, Susan Monarez.
The speaker was also pressed on whether he would allow a floor vote to compel the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, and whether the House would take action on gun violence in the wake of the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School.
Congress returns next week from its monthlong August recess. Here are highlights from Johnson’s interview.
Johnson says CDC shakeup ‘needed’
“Well, I think overall, Secretary Kennedy is doing a great job,” Johnson said when asked about the tumult at the CDC.
“There’s been a shakeup that’s been needed there, and I think we’ve got to trust the secretary to do his job,” the speaker added. “They’ve had some great results there. We’re getting America healthy again — that’s well received across the country, and long overdue, in my view, so we’re going to let the Cabinet do their job, and I’m going to stay in my lane and do mine.”
Asked about vaccine availability for Americans and overall trust in the CDC following this week’s showdown, Johnson said “let’s see how all that sorts out.”
“The CDC plays an important role in the government and in our society, and we want it to be strong, and we want it to be restored to its original intent,” Johnson said. “The secretary’s made a good point that the existing leadership was not — not doing that.”
Johnson on whether House will vote on Epstein files
When lawmakers return to Washington, so will a renewed push for the complete release of the Epstein files from Justice Department.
Johnson will be faced with a bipartisan effort, led by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, to force a floor vote on their discharge petition.
“If it’s necessary, we will,” Johnson said of having a vote on the discharge petition on the floor, despite previously calling their bill “reckless” and ending the legislative session early in July over the Epstein controversy.
But Johnson said he believed it wouldn’t be needed after the Justice Department handed over thousands of Epstein documents to the House Oversight Committee last week.
“I think what’s happened over August, over the last few weeks, has probably mooted that — the necessity of legislation,” Johnson said.
Khanna has criticized the Justice Department’s release to the committee, saying much of it was information that was already public and that lawmakers still need to pass his bill.
Johnson addresses Minneapolis shooting
Following the deadly school shooting in Minnesota, which left two children dead and 18 people injured, Johnson did not point to any new legislation that would address gun violence or mental health that could be brought up in Congress, but said he is “always open for that” discussion.
“Listen, it’s important that politicians on either side of the aisle do not politicize a moment like this,” Johnson said. “There are many commonsense measures that can and should be taken to protect children at schools and churches that do not involve taking away the constitutional rights of law-abiding American citizens.”
“At the end of the day, the problems in these situations is not the guns, it’s the human heart, and we can put more resources towards treatment of mental health,” Johnson said.
The speaker said that he is open to “any bipartisan solution that can address these kinds of issues that actually go to the heart of the matter.”
Johnson talks ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
Many Republican lawmakers spent August recess hearing from constituents after the passage of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, with some town halls turning heated over the matter.
This week, Trump suggested the legislation needed a rebranding, saying the phrase “big beautiful bill” was “not good for explaining to people what it’s all about.”
A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found just three in 10 Americans approve of Trump’s signature tax and budget bill.
Johnson, on “Good Morning America,” pushed back against the poll numbers and claimed individual provisions in the bill are more popular than surveys show once they are explained to the public.
“What we did over the August district work period is all the Republican members of Congress, Senate and House, went out, fanned out across the country in their districts, and talked with the American people about the extraordinary provisions that are in this bill,” the speaker said.
“It is aptly named. It is big and it is beautiful, and every single American is going to benefit from it,” Johnson said.
Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who left for a three-day hiking trip and was last heard from on July 29, was found dead in Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, according to the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office. Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office
(BIG HORN COUNTY, Wyo.) — After being missing for nearly a month, a man who had left for a three-day hike in Wyoming was found dead in Bighorn National Forest, authorities said.
“While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family,” the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.
Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who had planned on a three-day hike “through the Misty Moon Lake area, eventually summiting Cloud Peak,” which is the highest peak within Bighorn National Forest, was last heard from on July 29, when he contacted his wife, saying he had made it to the summit, the sheriff’s office said.
Phone records revealed that he had reached the summit at Cloud Peak — which is around 13,000 feet — at approximately 7 p.m., which was concerning to officials due to the “lack of visible trails through cliffs, timer line, boulder fields and other hazards that had to be navigated after dark before reaching clear trails and safe terrain,” officials said.
Since then, officials said “there has not been any contact with Gardner.”
On Tuesday, a professional climbing team from North Carolina “summited Cloud Peak and descended to the northern route of the peak,” the sheriff’s office said. When the team was establishing a high-altitude camp for the evening, they “noticed a slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” and were “confident it was a backpack,” the sheriff’s office said.
But due to nightfall approaching, further investigation would be “too dangerous,” so the team notified the sheriff’s office via satellite, officials said.
Then on Wednesday, teams from the sheriff’s office were launched and “Grant Gardner’s remains were located near the backpack” and he was wearing “clothing that very closely matched the terrain he was climbing in,” officials said.
The body was recovered in one of the two primary search areas, “very closely matching one of the highest probability scenarios,” officials said.
“It is noteworthy that this area had been covered by air and other means, underscoring how difficult this mission has been,” the sheriff’s office said.
Bighorn National Forest is over 1 million acres, with 191,000 acres dedicated to the Cloud Peak Wilderness area, which is where Gardner is believed to have been traveling, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
While the case has been transferred to the Big Horn County Coroner’s Office to determine the time, manner and cause of death, officials said they believe Gardner “succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised.”
Prior to the discovery of Gardner’s body, officials had suspended search efforts for the hiker, saying that his “most optimistic survival odds have run out.”
“I have made the heartbreaking and difficult decision to suspend active search and rescue operations for Mr. Gardner. Our teams have exhausted all resources and personnel over the last 20 days. With weather conditions and other factors updated in our search models, we have to face the reality that the most optimistic survival odds have run out,” Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn said in a statement last week.
Now, after this “dangerous” recovery, Gardner’s body will be “brought home to his family,” officials said.
Luigi Mangione attends a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court on February 21, 2025 in New York City.Luigi Mangione attends a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court on February 21, 2025 in New York City.
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione, the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, may have influenced last month’s deadly attack on NFL headquarters in New York City, federal prosecutors argued in a new court filing.
By carrying out the assassination-style killing of CEO Brian Thompson last year on a Midtown Manhattan street, Mangione “hoped to normalize the use of violence,” instead of reasoned dialogue, to achieve political objectives, prosecutors said. The prosecutors used last month’s mass shooting attack on the NFL headquarters in Midtown as an example.
On July 28, Shane Tamura brought an assault-style rifle to 345 Park Avenue, not far from where Mangione allegedly gunned down Thompson. Tamura shot and killed four people and, like Mangione, left behind writings for investigators to find. Tamura, in a letter found on his body, blamed the NFL and football for causing CTE. Tamura played football in high school, but not beyond that level.
CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, often seen in military veterans and athletes, including football players, hockey players and boxers. It can only be diagnosed after a person’s death.
Mangione allegedly wrote “deny,” “depose” and “delay” on the bullets used to kill Thompson, authorities said. In a notebook found after his arrest, Mangione allegedly wrote in a journal, “The target is insurance” because “it checks every box.”
“The murder was thus, by the defendant’s own admission, calculated to resonate beyond this specific victim and to generate scorn, outrage, or fear toward the health insurance sector more broadly,” prosecutors said. “Simply put, the defendant hoped to normalize the use of violence to achieve ideological or political objectives. Since the murder, certain quarters of the public — who openly identify as acolytes of the defendant — have increasingly begun to view violence as an acceptable, or even necessary, substitute for reasoned political disagreement.”
The government believes Mangione deserves the death penalty in part because he poses a continuing danger by seeking to influence others.
Federal prosecutors elaborated on their reasoning for pursuing capital punishment as they urged a federal judge to deny a defense motion that asked for additional evidence to support the government’s theories.
Prosecutors said Mangione is not entitled to additional information at this stage of the case and argued “the defendant is already in possession of the evidentiary support for the Government’s aggravating factors and there is no risk of surprise.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing. Mangione is accused of shooting the CEO several times using a 9 mm handgun equipped with a silencer. He was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, several days later.
People hold posters of Ilan Weiss at the “International Rally – United We Bring Them Home” rally in Hostage Square on May 18th, 2024 in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The bodies of two Israeli hostages — including Ilan Weiss who was killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel — have been recovered, according to a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“The hostage families embrace the family of Ilan Weiss during this difficult time. Ilan’s return fulfills the State of Israel’s fundamental duty to its citizens,” the statement read. “Our hearts are with the family today. Alongside the grief and pain, his return provides some comfort to the family after 692 days of waiting in the nightmare of uncertainty.”
Ilan Weiss, was killed on Oct. 7, 2023, while his wife and daughter were kidnapped but later released during the first ceasefire in November 2023.
The remains of the second body recovered has not been identified, officials said.
“We wish to express our deep gratitude to the IDF and security forces who have worked and continue to work with dedication and courage,” the statement continued. “Only by bringing home all hostages can we achieve healing and national recovery.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The Kyivstar signboard visible on the facade of the building on December 15, 2023 in Lviv, Ukraine. (Photo by Mykola Tys/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Kyivstar — Ukraine’s leading digital operator — will ring the Nasdaq opening bell Friday morning as the first Ukrainian company to be listed on a United States stock exchange to celebrate its historic listing and the launch of its Invest in Ukraine NOW! campaign.
The company officially began trading on the Nasdaq on Aug. 15 under the umbrella of its parent company, VEON. Together, the companies launched the campaign to draw in U.S. and global investors, showcasing Kyvistar as a unique investment opportunity not only as a successful company, but also as a symbol of Ukraine’s economic growth and potential post-war recovery.
Beyond its nearly 22.4 million mobile customers, Kyivstar has expanded into entertainment, digital healthcare and ride-hailing platforms that all rank among Ukrainian market leaders.
“Kyivstar’s listing on Nasdaq under the ticker KYIV gives American investors a window into the Ukrainian economy as a whole,” said Augie K Fabela II, chairman and founder of VEON, in a press release.
The Invest in Ukraine NOW! campaign was attended by Ukrainian government officials, VEON and Kyivstar executives, investors, and business leaders. VEON and Kyivstar framed the initiative as both an image of wartime resilience and a practical effort to spur foreign investment.
“We have transformed Kyivstar into a robust digital operator with a globally attractive business model and growth story, while being the backbone of Ukraine’s resilience and reconstruction,” said Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov in a press release.
“This week we mark the resilience and potential of Ukraine. Together with our team, partners, investors and governmental counterparts, we mark the beginning of Kyivstar’s new chapter. We are excited to help build bridges for other Ukrainian companies to deepen their global partnerships, especially with the American and global business community.”
(Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(KENAI, Alaska) — A woman has suffered “serious injuries” in Alaska when a bear attacked her near her driveway while she was out on her early morning jog, officials said.
The incident occurred early Tuesday morning when the Kenai Police Department in Alaska received a call at 6:58 a.m. informing them that there had been a bear attack near the intersection of Chinook Drive in Kenai, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in their statement on Tuesday.
“[An] investigation revealed a 36-year-old female departed her residence at 5:45 a.m. to go jogging and was near her driveway when the initial attack occurred,” police said.
A neighbor eventually came outside and located the unnamed victim before alerting authorities to the incident.
The jogger was taken by helicopter to an Anchorage area hospital where she was treated for “serious injuries,” according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, though no details were given about what injuries she sustained or what condition she was in following her initial medical evaluation and treatment.
“Alaska Wildlife Troopers, Kenai Police Department, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel searched the area on foot and with a drone looking for the bear,” officials said. “The bear has not been located. Patrols of the area will continue, and the public is advised to remain vigilant while outdoors.”
The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge nearby contains almost 2 million acres of land along with an estimated 2,183 different animal species living there, according to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
The investigation into the attack is currently ongoing.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on August 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A rare political standoff continued between the leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Trump administration continued on Thursday, leaving CDC Director Susan Monarez’s termination in limbo as high-level CDC officials resigned in protest.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez, saying Monarez “was not aligned with the president’s mission to make America healthy again.”
“It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5,” Leavitt said. “This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission.”
Leavitt said her replacement will be announced “very soon” either by Trump or by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But immediately after the White House press briefing, Monarez’s attorneys pushed back that she still hasn’t heard directly from the president and thus hasn’t been officially terminated from her job — her stance since Wednesday.
“[White House press secretary] can say whatever she wants because thankfully free speech still exists in this country. But it doesn’t make her comments factually true, even when from a White House podium,” attorney Mark Zaid wrote on X.
Monarez’s attorneys maintain that she will respect the decision of the president himself, but said they have not had any further communication with the White House since Wednesday night, when a White House staffer notified her that she’d been fired. They don’t consider the notification substantial enough because she is a Senate-confirmed, presidential appointee.
Further legal routes, if they don’t hear from the president, are “under consideration,” Zaid told ABC News. In the meantime, Monarez does not have access to her work office or email, he said.
Meanwhile, President Trump has yet to publicly weigh in on the dispute.
Kennedy, at a news conference about rural health in Texas on Thursday, said Monarez was “let go.”
“There’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it can require getting rid of some people over the long term in order for us to change the institutional culture and bring back pride and self esteem and make that agency the stellar agency that it’s always been,” Kennedy said.
Monarez’s attorneys say the administration is attempting to oust her for “protecting the public” over serving “a political agenda.” The dispute began as a disagreement over demands from Kennedy and his top staff for Monarez to support changes to COVID vaccine policy and the firings of high-level staff, which Monarez would not commit to, a source familiar with the conversations told ABC News.
After HHS said on Wednesday that Monarez was no longer director of the agency, four other senior career officials at the CDC also resigned, according to emails obtained by ABC News.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a deciding vote on Kennedy’s confirmation to lead HHS as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, wrote on X that the “high profile departures will require oversight by the HELP Committee.”
Cassidy also called for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a committee that reviews vaccine data and determines nationwide recommendations, to be indefinitely postponed following the CDC staff shakeups. The next meeting of the agency’s vaccine panel is scheduled for September 18 and 19.
“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting. These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted,” Cassidy said in a statement on Thursday.
The White House on Thursday was asked about Trump’s stance on COVID vaccines, specifically whether he believes they should be available and covered by insurance for all Americans, regardless of age and pre-existing conditions.
The question came after the FDA on Wednesday approved updated COVID-19 vaccines for only high-risk Americans, a narrower scope than in the past.
The new, more limited FDA approval for the vaccines questions about accessibility — whether people will still be able to get the vaccines easily in pharmacies, rather than doctors offices — and insurance coverage, which is often determined by the CDC advisory committee’s recommendations. The list price, without coverage, for certain COVID vaccines is over $100.
“The reason for the revocation of that emergency youth authorization is because, obviously, the COVID pandemic and the public health emergency is over,” Leavitt said. “But just to correct the record, because there’s been a lot of misinformation on this, the FDA decision does not affect the availability of COVID vaccines for Americans who want them.”
“We believe in individual choice. That’s a promise both the president and the secretary have made. It’s a promise they have now delivered on,” Leavitt said.
Dozens of first responders crowd the street in front of Annunciation Catholic Church that was the scene of a shooting that killed two children and wounded seventeen other people on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minn. (Renee Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — A motive in the Annunciation Catholic School mass shooting remains under investigation, and police said they’ve not identified a specific trigger for why the children at this church were targeted.
Investigators determined that Westman “harbored a whole lot of hate towards a wide variety of people and groups of people,” and also “had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News Live on Thursday.
“This person, you know, committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.
“The shooter expressed hate towards almost every group,” Joe Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said at a news conference on Thursday. “The shooter expressed hate towards Black people, the shooter expressed hate towards Mexican people, the shooter expressed hate towards Christian people, the shooter expressed hate towards Jewish people. In short, the shooter appeared to hate all of us.”
The shooter also “expressed hate” toward President Donald Trump, he said.
“There appears to be only one group that the shooter didn’t hate, one group of people who the shooter admired — the group were the school shooters and mass murderers that are notorious in this country,” Thompson said.
“More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children, defenseless children. … The shooter wanted to watch children suffer,” Thompson said.
An 8-year-old and a 10-year-old were killed and 18 people — including 15 kids — were injured when the shooter opened fire through the windows of the Minneapolis school’s church on Wednesday morning. All injured victims are expected to survive, police said.
Westman never entered the church building, but could have entered after shooting out a door-sized window, O’Hara told ABC News.
“These children were slaughtered by a shooter who could not see them,” O’Hara said at a news conference, noting the shooter “was standing outside of the building firing through very narrow church windows.”
Westman died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Driver’s license information reviewed by ABC News described Westman as a female, born on June 17, 2002. A name change application for a minor born on the same date, June 17, 2002, was approved by a district court in Minnesota in 2020, changing the name of a Robert Westman to Robin Westman, explaining the minor child “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”
Investigators are reviewing hundreds of pages of documents, videos and other evidence as they look for a motive, O’Hara said.
Police have also conducted dozens of interviews with witnesses as well as people who knew the suspect, though investigators “have not been successful” in talking to Westman’s mother, the chief said.
A neighbor of Robin Westman’s father and stepmother, who describes himself as a close friend of the family, said some family members began getting death threats less than three hours after the shooting took place.
“This is going to ruin their lives,” the neighbor, who declined to be publicly named, told ABC News.
The neighbor said Robin Westman was into activities that interested many kids — particularly skateboarding and rock climbing — and was “a good kid who gave up no signs of violence.”
“If she was radicalized, it must have been quickly. We have no idea how this could happen,” the neighbor said.
The father and stepmother “were the best neighbors I can possibly imagine,” the neighbor said, describing the family as “apolitical,” “not a gun family” and “live and let live people.”
The neighbor said he wishes for “grace and sympathy” for the parents.
“They are not at fault,” the neighbor said. “She was a young person living on her own. The parents don’t have access to what they are doing unless they are checking everything they do. What parent is doing that?”
Officials are investigating a series of videos posted to YouTube believed to be associated with the suspect, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the matter. Two videos, posted Wednesday morning and since removed by YouTube, show someone flipping through dozens of pages of notes dated over the course of several months, which include what appears to be doodles of weapons, middle fingers and expletives, as well as repeated references to killing.
Writings in notebooks and on the guns indicate a series of grievances, anger and ideations of harm to self and to others. The writings also appear to show overt references to other high-profile school shootings and shooters.
Officers recovered three guns — one rifle, one shotgun and one handgun — at the scene, all of which are believed to have been fired in the attack, police said. All of the guns were purchased legally by Westman, police said, and authorities believe they were purchased recently in Minnesota.
Three shotgun shells and 116 rifle rounds were recovered, police said. One live round was recovered from a handgun that appeared to malfunction, leaving the bullet stuck in the chamber, the chief said.
As Minneapolis mourns, Mayor Jacob Frey is stressing the need for gun control, telling ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” “How many times have you heard politicians talk of an ‘unspeakable tragedy’? And yet this kind of thing happens again and again.”
“Prayers, thoughts, they are certainly welcomed, but they are not enough,” Frey said. “There needs to be change so that we don’t have another mayor, in another month-and-a half, talking about a tragedy that happened in their city.”
Danielle Gunter, whose son, an eighth grader, was shot and wounded, said in a statement to Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP, “We feel the pain, the anger, the confusion, and the searing reality that our lives will never be the same. Yet we still have our child.”
“We grieve and we pray: for the others who were shot, for their families, and for those who lost loved ones,” she said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said he’s sending state law enforcement to help with security at schools and places of worship in the city.
ABC News’ Alex Perez, Alyssa Acquavella, Mariama Jalloh, Pierre Thomas, Jack Date, Luke Barr, Aaron Katersky, Sasha Pezenik and Mark Guarino contributed to this report.
