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(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.

Police did confirm that Robin Westman, the 23-year-old suspect, had attended the school, and Westman’s mother previously worked in the parish.

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.

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(CHELAN COUNTY, Wash.) — After a two-day search of the area where Travis Decker allegedly murdered his three young daughters, the FBI said they will be analyzing “several items” that were recovered near the crime scene.

The FBI concluded its two-day grid search operation on Tuesday, focusing within the vicinity of Rock Island Campground in Leavenworth, Washington, where the girls bodies’ were found back on June 2, W. Mike Herrington, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle field office, said in a press release on Thursday.

The purpose of search was to “locate Travis Decker, discover signs of his whereabouts or find any other evidence of the murder of his three daughters,” Herrington said.

Over 100 personnel were deployed and 1,000,000 square meters were searched, but Decker has not been located, Herrington said.

“A search of this magnitude and detail has not previously taken place in this area,” Herrington said.

During the investigation, Herrington said search personnel recovered “several items that are being examined to determine if they are related to this investigation,” saying that final results “will take some time.”

“Finding this potential evidence emphasizes the value in having various teams search an area multiple times, especially in such challenging conditions,” Herrington said.

Herrington added that officials are “committed to bringing every available FBI resource that will advance this case for as long as it takes.”

During a press conference on Monday, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison said officials “will not relent” and “not give up” on the search efforts, even if locating Decker takes years.

“The girls would not want us to give up,” Morrison said on Monday. “If it’s not me wearing this uniform, it’s another Chelan County sheriff. We will find him, in one fashion or another.”

Paityn Decker, 9; Evelyn Decker, 8; and Olivia Decker, 5, were found dead near the Rock Island Campground after they left home for a planned visit with their father on May 30, according to police.

The U.S. Marshals Service is still offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading directly to Decker’s arrest.

Anyone who sees Decker or knows of his whereabouts should call 911 immediately and not contact or approach him, officials said. He is currently wanted for three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of kidnapping, officials said.

Decker is considered armed and dangerous, officials said.

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(NEW YORK) — A temporary ground stop halted incoming flights at Newark Liberty International Airport on Thursday due to air traffic control communication issues, marking the latest in a series of disruptions at the busy New Jersey airport.

Air traffic controllers briefly lost their radio frequencies during the ground stop, which lasted from approximately 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET, according to Federal Aviation Administration bulletins. Delays averaged more than two hours.

The FAA responded by further reducing Newark’s flight capacity. The agency cut incoming flights to 28 per hour until at least Friday, a significant decrease from the airport’s normal capacity of 40-42 flights per hour, which had already been lowered to 34 in recent weeks.

“The FAA is pausing some flights into Newark Liberty International Airport due to equipment issues. We are investigating the cause,” the agency said in a statement. Controllers were instructed to space arriving aircraft about 20 miles apart on approach to Newark, a controller on duty told ABC News.

The disruption marked the second outage for controllers at the Philadelphia air traffic control center, which manages Newark’s airspace, within 24 hours.

During Wednesday evening’s outage, pilots reported that controller call signs were cutting out entirely, according to air traffic recordings obtained by LiveATC.net. One controller was heard telling pilots they were “having some sort of FTI issues” and had placed flights in a hold.

“Out here it’ll be no call sign or just be heading 040,” one pilot reported during Wednesday’s incident, explaining why aircraft weren’t acknowledging transmissions.

The latest disruption adds to a growing list of technical issues at Newark.

On May 11, a telecommunications problem at the Philadelphia TRACON facility prompted a 45-minute ground stop. Just days earlier, on May 9, radar screens went dark for 90 seconds, forcing controllers to warn incoming aircraft about potential communication issues, according to FAA reports.

In late April, controllers experienced a 60-90 second outage that darkened their computer screens and cut off aircraft communications, sources familiar with the incident told ABC News.

Following the April incident, several controllers took medical leave, citing the event as traumatic, ABC News had reported.

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(MINNEAPOLIS) — The Minneapolis Police Department’s response to Wednesday’s deadly church shooting showed significant improvements in how law enforcement handles mass casualty events, according to a former police chief who managed a similar crisis.

Jarrod Burguan, who led the response to the 2015 San Bernardino terror attack, praised Minneapolis authorities for their clear communication and fast response to the Annunciation Catholic School shooting that killed two children — an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old — and left 18 others injured.

“Minneapolis PD has done a very good job in this case,” Burguan told ABC News on Thursday. “Chief O’Hara was tremendous. He was very clear in his press conferences and gave very good information. For the most part, this has not been an incident that had a lot of false information getting out there.”

The FBI is investigating the attack as potential domestic terrorism and a possible hate crime after the shooter, identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman, opened fire through church windows during a Mass marking the first week of school. Westman died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Burguan told ABC News that the coordinated response between local police and federal authorities reflects improvements made since previous mass shootings.

“We are better today than we were three years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago,” he said, while acknowledging the tragic reality that schools now require enhanced security measures.

Drawing on his experience in the December 2015 San Bernardino attack, in which 14 people were killed and 22 were injured, Burguan explained how federal and local agencies cooperate in such investigations.

“The reality is, on the ground, the FBI agents and the leadership in Minneapolis, as well as Minneapolis PD and the surrounding agencies… they really work well together,” he said.

However, Burguan expressed concern about potential warning signs that may have preceded the attack.

“For somebody to have been living that life, people in and around that suspect had to have known something was off,” he said, noting the suspect’s “hatred of institutions in this country, whether it was the church.”

Burguan warned that extensive coverage of mass shootings could motivate copycats who glorify such violence.

“You hear a story of somebody like this that somehow seemed to idolize people that perform this act,” he said. “That is very, very disturbing to think that even in light of coverage like this and the anger and the community frustration that happens, somebody might be sitting back going, ‘Well, this was a good thing.’ That’s frightening.”

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(LEWISTON, Maine) — One of Maine’s largest abortion care providers said it will have to dramatically cut services after a federal judge ruled earlier this week that the Trump administration is not required to restore Medicaid funding.

Under H.R.1 — the mega-bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last month — family planning and abortion providers are not allowed to collect Medicaid funding if they received at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in 2023.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) sued the Trump administration on behalf of Maine Family Planning — the largest network of sexual and reproductive health care clinics in the state — arguing that the provision violates the Equal Protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

However, Judge Lance Walker ruled that because Roe v. Wade was overruled in June 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Congress can “withhold federal funds and otherwise disassociate from conduct that is not enshrined.”

Medicaid funds are not used to cover abortion costs in most circumstances, but they are used to pay for other health care costs. George Hill, president and CEO of Maine Family Planning, said the network will have to cut services or drastically reduce the number of patients they can see.

“Right now, we’re not accepting new Medicaid-insured patients for primary care,” he told ABC News. “We are going to have to stop providing primary care to Medicaid enrolled patients, probably by the end of September.”

Hill said Maine Family Planning is not billing Medicaid for current Medicaid patients, but added that continuing to do so is likely not a sustainable option.

“It’s costing us, in lost revenue, about $165,000 a month,” Hill said. “That clearly is unsustainable. We’re spending a good deal of time getting the word out about the quality of the care that we provide, why it’s necessary in the areas that we provide, to a wide range of private donors. But … it’s not sustainable over the long term.”

Maine Family Planning has been receiving about $1.9 million a year in reimbursements, which makes up about 20% of its budget, Olivia Pennington, director of advocacy and community engagement at Maine Family Planning, told ABC News.

Pennington said the provision in the mega-bill was intended to prevent federal dollars from reaching Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., but the Maine agency appeared to be caught in the crosshairs.

“We knew there was a chance we were going to get caught up in this attempt to defund Planned Parenthood,” she told ABC News. “We weren’t sure exactly what that was going to look like, but July 4, when that bill was signed, we were acutely aware that, as of that day, we had to stop billing MaineCare, which is what we call Medicaid here in the state of Maine.”

Pennington said that although Maine Family Planning does provide abortion care, the clinics also provide contraceptive care, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and HIV testing and prevention.

Maine Family Planning can also refer patients to other services, such as care for HIV treatments, Pennington said.

Additionally, at three of Maine Family Planning’s 18 brick-and-mortar clinics — mainly in rural and unserved areas — staff provide primary care. The agency also has a mobile medical unit for those who can’t make it to a physical location.

Pennington said the clinics are in areas with no public transit infrastructure and that the next closest clinic for patients may be as far as three hours away.

“There’s a lack of access to primary care in those areas,” she said. “For most of our patients, we know that we are the first and only health care provider they see in a year.”

Pennington added that half of all patients not receiving abortion care at Maine Family Planning are covered by Medicaid. Currently, the clinics are seeing those patients free of charge.

However, she is worried that not having Medicaid funding restored will result in a domino effect that could harm all patients, including those not on Medicaid.

“If MaineCare patients can no longer receive services at their local Maine Family Planning, other providers are going to be forced to absorb those patients,” Pennington said. “And because there’s already such a shortage of family planning and reproductive health care providers in the state, it will become much harder for everyone in the state to get health care.”

She went on, “We are continuing to see these patients free of charge because we believe that they deserve access to high-quality health care, but that’s not a sustainable option.”

Astrid Ackerman, staff attorney at CRR, told ABC News the team is prepared to explore every legal avenue to restore Medicaid funding for Maine Family Planning. She said the decision by the court this week is putting the health care of “thousands” of people in Maine in jeopardy.

“What is really happening is that it’s a way for the Trump administration to punish and go after abortion providers,” Ackerman said. “Medicaid funding has not … covered abortion, besides just some very limited exceptions, for decades — like they cannot use Medicaid funding for abortion generally.”

“So then the Trump administration, what they’re doing is trying to say, ‘Look, you are providing abortions. I know that I’m not giving you federal funding for abortions, but nonetheless, I’m going to punish you for providing abortion.’ Again, in a state [like Maine] where abortion is protected,” she added.

ABC News reached out to the HHS asking for a request for comment.

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(NEW YORK) — Police are searching for three male suspects in the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old with a walker in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, according to the New York Police Department.

Robin Wright, 69, was shot in the face once by an unidentified person, the NYPD said.

Police responded to the report of a person shot in the vicinity of East 110 Street and Madison Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, according to police.

Wright was found with a gunshot to the face and was transported to Mount Sinai Morningside in critical condition, where she was later pronounced dead, authorities said.

Police have not made any arrests in the shooting and have not released any further description of the suspects, police said.

Wright was not the intended target of the shooting, a city official told WABC.

Police told WABC that a man who had just been mugged by two other men chased after them and started shooting. One of those bullets struck the victim, who never saw it coming, officials said.

The investigation into the shooting is ongoing, according to police.

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