Gun store owner says shooter who killed 2 schoolchildren showed no
warning signs before attack
[September 05, 2025]
By MARK VANCLEAVE and STEVE KARNOWSKI
ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. (AP) — The shooter who killed two schoolchildren
and injured 21 other people at a Catholic church in Minneapolis visited
a suburban gun shop the weekend before the attack, but the owner of the
store said Thursday that his staff saw no warning signs in their
interactions.
Gun store owner Kory Krause told The Associated Press that Robin Westman
spent around 40 minutes at Frontiersman Sports in St. Louis Park on Aug.
23 and appeared completely at ease. A surveillance video showed Westman
examined several guns before ultimately buying a revolver.
Westman had already passed the required background checks and had a
valid permit to purchase the gun, Krause said.
The revolver wasn't one of the guns Westman used in the shootings at the
Church of the Annunciation on Aug. 27, when it was full of students from
the affiliated Annunciation Catholic School who had gathered for their
first Mass of the academic year. Investigators recovered a semiautomatic
assault-style rifle, a shotgun and a different handgun at the scene, and
said Westman was legally entitled to buy them. Krause said none came
from his store.
Westman, 23, attended the school for eighth grade and Westman's mother
formerly worked for the parish, but investigators are still trying to
determine a motive. Westman died by suicide after firing 116 rifle
rounds through the church’s stained-glass windows.
As first reported by KSTP-TV, the security video shows Westman handling
several firearms and talking with employees and other customers. Krause
wasn't in the store at the time, but he said he promptly shared the
video with investigators and is cooperating with them.
Krause stressed that nothing in Westman's conduct raised any concerns
among his staffers, who he said are trained to watch for warning signs.
“This person said all the right things, they checked all the right
boxes, asked all the questions, they were friendly, talkative, making
jokes, laughing, knowledgeable about guns, handled a lot of guns that
were not the type of guns you would think are of the interest of
somebody looking to do a mass shooting,” Krause told the AP.
Krause said his employees have extensive experience in picking out bad
actors, straw purchasers, people who are homicidal, suicidal, mentally
unstable or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He said nothing
stood out with Westman.
“We're still going over it,” Krause said. “We’re still scratching our
heads thinking, ‘What did we miss? What could we have done?’ But it
always ends with the answer of ‘nothing.’ There was just nothing there.
And that’s what makes this situation so unique.”
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An image made from surveillance footage provided by Kory Krause
shows Robin Westman inside the Frontiersman Sports gun shop in St.
Louis Park, Minn., on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025. (Kory
Krause/Frontiersman Sports via AP)
A mother's plea
At a news conference Thursday at Hennepin Healthcare, a trauma
hospital that treated several victims, Annunciation parent Malia
Kimbrell delivered a wrenching account about her daughter’s injuries
and implored lawmakers to ban assault weapons.
Her 9-year-old daughter, Vivian St. Clair, was shot three times:
twice in the back and once in the arm. The girl, who had been in
intensive care, is now recovering at home.
“Her friend said to her, ‘Vivi, are you OK? You have a hole in your
back,’” Kimbrell recounted.
Kimbrell, a nurse in the hospital's newborn intensive care unit,
challenged lawmakers to ban the kind of high-powered rifles and high
capacity magazines used by the shooter, saying she will “settle for
nothing less.”
“I will get the names of any lawmakers who stand in the way of that
happening, and I will invite you to come to my living room and
insist that you hold Vivian’s hand while we do her dressing changes
each night and she cries the entire time,” she said. “Action is our
only hope. Thinking and praying are what you do after a tragedy.
Taking action is what we can do before the next tragedy occurs.”
The politics of change
Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said Tuesday he intends to call a special
session of the Minnesota Legislature to address gun and school
safety, and he suggested that an assault weapons ban would be on his
list of proposals, which he is still developing. But it would be
very difficult for anything to pass the closely divided Legislature
without at least some bipartisan support.
House Republicans on Thursday released a list of proposals that lack
any restrictions on access to firearms. It calls for increased
funding for school security and for school resources officers,
including for private schools. The proposals would also prohibit
districts from banning school resource officers, as Minneapolis and
some other districts have done.
The House GOP also called for more mental health treatment beds and
mandatory minimum prison sentences for repeat criminals who use guns
and for straw purchasers of firearms that are used in violent
crimes.
Students Demand Action, an arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, is
organizing school walkouts across the country for Friday to demand
that state and federal lawmakers ban assault weapons and
high-capacity magazines.
___
Karnowski reported from Minneapolis. AP writer Sarah Raza
contributed from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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