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Two Children Have Been Killed in a Shooting During Mass Marking the First Week of Class for Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis; Two Children Killed, 14 Children and Three Adults Hurt in School Shooting. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 27, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JACOB FREY, (D) MINNEAPOLIS: It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends. They should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace without the fear or risk of violence. And their parents should have the same kind of assurance. These are the sort of basic assurances that every family should have, every step of the day, regardless of where they are in our country.

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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': I mean, he's expressing something that I know you feel and most people feel, which is a combination of sadness, but raw rage --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Forget about thoughts and prayers, these kids were literally praying when they were murdered through a church window.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, (D) MINNESOTA: It's unbelievable. And just, you know, the Jacob, the mayor and his wife Sarah, just had a second baby. So I know he knows this just gutturally of how this feels, to think of your own children in that situation. And I think part of what he's getting at here, is that there's thoughts and prayers, and then the law enforcement does their job well, and they -- hospitals do their job well and they save some lives and people are injured. But there's a whole room of those kids in that church that are going to never forget what happened. Hopefully, they'll be able to get through it in their own lives. But you think of that in other mass shootings, it's the immediate death. It's the immediate family, but then it's a whole community, and ultimately it's an entire nation.

BASH: Yeah.

KLOBUCHAR: That has to grapple with the fact of we have too many guns out there right now. And there's all kinds of policy things that we could do that would still preserve people's right to hunt, people's right to collect guns, people that care about guns for sport and guns for protection. But at some point, when you see these innocent kids praying in a church and they get gunned down by a madman, you have to step back and think, what can we do better? What can we do better with background checks or with assault weapons, which may not have played in to this situation, but every situation is different. And there are a number of things we can do that would not hurt law abiding gun owners, of which there are so many in our -- my state and in our country. And so it does get you to that.

But right now in our state, we're just mourning for these families. We're mourning for those -- the kids that were in there that may have survived but will never be the same. And we are supporting our law enforcement and our hospitals, and there's right now some doctors and nurses that are sitting in an operating room with a little kid, trying to save them from a shot in the stomach or a shot in the neck. And that's what we think of viscerally now. But to just let it go there and say thoughts and prayers is no longer enough.

BASH: But Senator, I mean, you just alluded to this and this is what the mayor was getting at. How many times have we seen this cycle, this horrible cycle of the trauma, the tragedy? I mean, you mentioned that the whole nation -- I had to send a note to my brother to say, my niece and nephew who are nine and 10, don't watch the show today because I don't want them to be traumatized.

KLOBUCHAR: Yeah.

BASH: They'll hear about it and, and parents are dealing with this all across the country, and of course --

KLOBUCHAR: Yeah.

BASH: The most important, the parents that we're thinking of the most are those who have either lost those two children or those who have their children in the operating room right now. But when is enough going to be enough?

KLOBUCHAR: Exactly. I remember the stories when I was in Nashville after that school shooting, and I was in a bookstore, Ann Patchett's Bookstore, and one of -- this was a week later and one of the moms was in there just -- she couldn't sleep. She was looking for book, her -- of course, her child had survived, but she told the story to us of the kids in a line and how literally her child was in the line and saw her best friend shot, and she's just trying to hold on. She's trying to find a book. She's trying to figure out what can she read to her and make this better.

And there's one thing we can do to make this better and stop the angry rhetoric, start working on solutions that we know have worked in other countries or could work here. And it's not just one size fits all, but we've got to be willing to do it. And especially some of my colleagues who've been afraid to do it, we did do one bipartisan bill for community violence and including with Chris Murphy and Senator Cornyn and a number of other people that included my provision on domestic violence and people that have been convicted shouldn't be able to go out and get guns.

We've done these things, but there's much bigger things we could do when it comes to background checks and assault weapons, and having more national standards in place, and being stricter about getting these guns out there.

BASH: Yeah.

[12:35:00]

KLOBUCHAR: And if a bunch of kids praying in a church and shot down through the windows of that church and locked into that by a madman isn't enough to make people move, I just don't know what is anymore.

BASH: Senator, thank you so much for joining us --

KLOBUCHAR: OK.

BASH: -- on this -- on this horrific tragic day, in this moment, for your state, once again.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

BASH: Appreciate it.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

BASH: Thank you. And I want to go back now to our reporters and law enforcement experts. Evan Perez, you are here. Let's turn back to what we heard from the police chief about the bits and pieces that they have picked up so far about this suspect.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. The fact that the shooter is dead, self-inflicted according to the police chief, really does free them to tell us a little bit more. And he did provide important information, I think, in there -- in suggesting that the shooter left behind something that might explain what happened here. And obviously, one of the first things that happens after this is the question from parents and people in the community is why, why did this happen? How could we have done something to stop this? And I think we have the sound from Chief O'Hara, that we can play right now. Listen to this.

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CHIEF BRIAN O'HARA, MINNEAPOLIS POLICE: The question was, was anything left behind? There's a vehicle that we believe that the suspect used that is being searched, and we are -- we will be conducting other searches related to this.

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PEREZ: And the -- what the -- the chief was saying is that the suspect did leave behind something. Now we don't know what that is, and that's something that the investigators are now going to be busy. But obviously, at the scene there, the first order of business is to catalog that scene to try to get a picture of exactly what happened. Dana, one of the things that, after Uvalde and some of the other previous shootings that we've covered here, one of the things that police and the communities have done is to harden schools, right? To protect kids once they get inside those walls, to make sure that nobody can get in there to harm them.

Well, in this case, you're talking about a Catholic school. I went to a Catholic school all my life, and so I remember, the first school mass of the year was like a really joyful thing, right? You had everybody coming in from the whole school together to celebrate mass. In this case, these kids would've been about 15 minutes into their first school mass of the year. And this is what happens. And this shooter does not even get into the premises. He's doing it from outside the windows of the church. He doesn't get into the school. He gets into the church. And that's something again, school administrators and the police, they work to try to harden schools and to try to protect kids. But this is one that we hadn't thought of, I guess.

And now the question is, how do you protect kids as they're making their way from the school building to the church? And there is places where there will always be some danger lurking, it appears.

BASH: Andy McCabe, I want to bring you back. I interrupted you earlier when we were going to the hospital press conference. What more are you thinking about -- thinking, of course, as an investigator?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Dana, it's the now very familiar kind of checklist of tasks that investigators are going through. As Evan mentioned, right now, they are trying to get their hands around what is, I'm sure, a ghastly and deeply disturbing crime scene. One of the ways they do that, I know the FBI evidence response team typically uses very advanced photographic equipment, essentially take 360-degree photographs that can later be used to very precisely plot out the distances and positions of evidence and possible trajectory of bullet fire, things of that nature.

They are cataloging everything that's left behind, whether that's shell casings or weapons or ammunition that was not spent, or of course, items from the victims themselves, items of clothing, people, things that they were carrying. The victims, it sounds like may have been removed from the scene already. We don't know that yet. We don't have perfect kind of visibility on all sides of that -- of that scene. So that's -- but that sometimes takes quite a while before the fatalities are able to be moved. They have to be kind of documented and processed a certain way at the scene.

So that is the gruesome and all too typical work that investigators are going through now. And then, of course, the search warrants. As you said, we'll see -- the police chief said, they'll no doubt get a search warrant to search that vehicle. As soon as they have this person fully identified, which I would suspect they probably already do, even though they're not sharing that with us just yet.

[12:40:00]

They will identify that person's, the shooter's residence, place of business, location of family members and close associates, and any place where the shooter is known to have occupied like a residence or an office or something like that. They'll execute search warrants there.

And they're looking for everything you know, documents, writings, electronics devices, anything used to access social media, things that could show internet searches, Google search history, that sort of thing, just to understand like, how did we get to this point today with this person?

BASH: Andy, thank you so much for that. Thanks to everybody. We're going to sneak in a quick break. Don't go anywhere. A lot more to learn, to discuss, and to report on this horrific tragedy in Minneapolis. Don't go anywhere.

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[12:45:35]

BASH: We are following this horrifying Breaking News out of Minneapolis, two children ages eight and 10 are dead. They were murdered. Seven others are in critical condition after a gunman opened fire while students at the Annunciation Catholic School were sitting and praying in church pews. He did so from outside through a window. Officials confirmed that shooter is dead from self-inflicted wounds. We're just three days into the school year in that community, a community, another one gripped by heartbreak and fear that has become tragically common in the United States of America.

I want to bring in CNN Reporter Arit John, who was in Minneapolis for the DNC Summer Retreat. The shooting happened. You are now there at the scene. Arit, I know you've been speaking to neighbors and witnesses. What are they telling you?

ARIT JOHN, CNN REPORTER (via telephone): Yeah, I've been talking to a lot of people who said they were -- it's 8:30 in the morning. They heard what they eventually realized was gunshots. People, they said that they came out to see how they could help. I talked to one man who said that he was comforting some of the children who came out with injuries. I talked to P.J. Mud (ph) who said that he saw -- he saw -- bullets on the -- bullet casings on the street. It is just -- this is a very close knit community. A lot of the people I talked to went to this school, went -- go to this church, are really ingrained in the community. And when they heard this gunfire, they said, what can I do to help? How can I go there and support my community?

BASH: And I mean, I'm sure we're -- just while you're talking, we're looking at some video that we have been seeing all morning, of these parents, of mostly small children racing to the school as they've heard the news, to find the news about their own children. I'm sure that feeling of terror is palpable where you're standing.

JOHN: Yeah. There -- I mean, you can just see it in people's faces. No community ever expects that this is going to happen to them, but when you see it, when you see the neighbors all coming together, somebody brought water out near where the press is gathered. People just have been standing. They wanted to listen to the press conference to understand what had happened in their community. And you're just -- yeah, you're just seeing like people really mobilizing, rally together to see what can they do to help right now?

BASH: Arit, thank you so much for being there and for calling in and giving us the on-the-scene reporting. I really appreciate it. I now want to bring in CNN Religion Contributor and Roman Catholic Priest, Father Edward Beck. Father Beck, thank you so much for being here. I'm sure you have seen the news about the fact that the shooting was at a Roman Catholic Church, Annunciation Roman Catholic Church. Service marking the first week of school, only day three of school for these young children attending Catholic school.

FATHER EDWARD BECK, CNN RELIGION CONTRIBUTOR AND ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST: Yeah, it's horrific, Dana. And of course, the fact that it occurs in a church in some ways makes it even more horrific because it's a place of prayer and sanctuary and peace that has been utterly violated by this violence. And I guess I want to say something, people I think are wondering everywhere right now, like what can we do? What can they do? And I heard some of the conversation earlier about thoughts and prayers, and I know in some ways, we've come to running simply to dismiss those words.

But right now I am at Manhattan University in New York, and there was scheduled a prayer service for all the athletes of the university. And so just a few minutes ago, I was in that chapel with about 500 athletes and most of them had not heard this news. So we're in a school setting, they are students. And I announced this news and we started praying for these students and families and faculty. And the students in that chapel, many of these athletes were weeping, were weeping at this news as they prayed.

[12:50:00]

And so I think that the thoughts and prayers in some way affect change in us. So I understand that we feel as though we need to do something, which I agree, and proper thought and prayer leads to action, leads to results. But I think it begins there. I think it begins by feeling in solidarity as a community that this is just heinous and wrong and unjust, and that we need to do something about it. But that impetus comes from the shared humanity, the sense of community, I think.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, listen, that is so lovely, Father Beck. As I'm listening to you say that, and I can't even imagine what that was like with 500 people just a little while ago, including students weeping. But for you, you're a Catholic priest. That's literally your job. That's your calling as a leader to lead people in your community in thoughts and prayers. People here in Washington and in communities elected by voters across the country, their job might be to pray for their constituents, but then it's also to make policy. And of course, that is the level of frustration, not that they're not praying, it's that they're praying and then turning to something else and leaving this behind until the next horrific shooting happens.

BECK: Right. But in some way, therefore, it does go back to the constituents who must, because of their empathy and their unification with this terrible tragedy, they have to demand of their representatives, of lawmakers that they do something. And then of course, the politicians have to respond to what the constituency wants. So how do we create that sense of solidarity and unification among the community who says, this is just not acceptable anymore because of who we are, because of our humanity, because of who we're called to be, and then demand the change. And I think that's where the missing link has been. We have not demanded it as a constituency, as a community of those policy makers.

BASH: Father, before I let you go, can we just talk about where these kids were? They were in this all-school mass. Anybody who sends their children or they themselves have gone to a parochial school or even a school, maybe just general school, where they have either a convocation or in this case a prayer, knows how meaningful and important those collections of people are. Can you talk about that from the perspective of being a Catholic priest?

BECK: Well, Dana, the question often in these situations that I would get asked is, how could God allow it? Where was God in it? And I think that is the question in a lot of people's minds. In a church, while people were praying, so prayers didn't help those children. And I think my only response can be that God is most present there in that sanctuary, in that church, that God's heart grieves and is united at the loss of these children. In what those parents and everyone connected to that school is going through. It's in some way that the suffering of God is united to the suffering of these people. Now you say, well, if God is all powerful, why doesn't God do something? And we don't have an answer for that.

Job in the sixth century BCE was asking the same question in the Hebrew scriptures, and he doesn't get an answer. He gets the answer, I'm sorry, I'm God and you're not. You're not going to always understand my ways, but I'm going to be with you in it. I'm not abandoning you. And so, I think in that sanctuary, if some of -- if this has to happen to somewhere and it should never happen, the fact that it was in a place of prayer is both disturbing, yet for me, somehow comforting that God is in the midst of that sanctuary and with those children in a way that is so powerful that I can't even comprehend it at this moment.

BASH: So well said, Father Beck, thank you for bringing that, trying to bring that spiritual understanding into something that is completely impossible to understand. And it's important and I'm guessing that you get the question, you didn't even have to wait for me to ask the question. That's a question that you get over and over in these situations. So, thank you for sharing it with our viewers. Appreciate it.

BECK: You're welcome. You're welcome, Dana.

BASH: And our experts are back with us. I want to bring in Josh Campbell, former FBI official. Josh, you have been on the scene and involved in investigations that involve shootings like this. What should we be thinking about?

[12:55:00]

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, there are a couple things that are going on behind the scenes and we've talked a lot about the -- getting the weapon and what was the motive and the like. One thing that I will be looking for in this investigation is whether anyone else in the shooter's orbit knew that there was some kind of issue happening here. And I say that because, Dana, all of the incidents that you and I have covered have been studied by the FBI in the past. And what these famed profilers have concluded is that so oftentimes, these shooters actually exhibit warning signs well in advance of the actual incident itself. The technical term they call is leakage.

If someone is changing behavior or they're talking about violence, that is something that investigators will want to know. That doesn't mean that anyone would necessarily be criminally liable, but if there's anything that happens after this incident that could be positive is that people understand that you have to be on the lookout for those kind of warning signs.

And then the last thing I'll mention as well about the firearms that are at play here, I think this doesn't get covered enough, and that is the impact that these kinds of weapons have on the human body. These weapons that are so easily to obtain out there, obviously, there's a whole constitutional issue. I'm just talking from a specific, a gun in the hands of someone who is intending to cause harm. We don't see, rightly so, the graphic images of what this does to people, but it's something that we have to talk about.

And the last thing I'll say is that what I'm about to say is horrific, but it gets to that point. I've covered so many of these incidents and I'm hearing from doctors that particularly involving children, they are especially susceptible to critical wounds because, and again, this is horrific, but it's something we have to understand. Small children as described to me by medical experts, their organs are closer together, unlike adults, which means that a gunshot wound that a child is facing can be catastrophic. And again, that's just something that we'll have to continue to have as part of the discussion as well, the impact of this gun violence.

BASH: Yeah, I mean, it is a cold hard reality and it is important to talk about. Josh, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you for joining us. Our coverage of this Breaking News, this tragedy continues after a quick break.

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