A 9-year-old girl who was inside Annunciation Catholic Church with her teacher and classmates when a deranged transgender gunman opened fire selflessly worried about everyone else getting hurt as she sheltered for her life.
“I heard the noise and I kind of got scared at first,” fourth-grader June Holine told CBS News, comparing the deafening sounds of gunfire to “a firework that didn’t launch off, like in your ear, that’s how loud it was.”
She said she was sitting in the back pews of the church when Robin Westman, 23, started indiscriminately shooting through the stained glass windows.
People from the Lutheran church charities comfort dog ministry sit and stand in front of the Annunciation Catholic Church on Aug. 28, 2025. AP“I was scared about if I would get hurt. I was worried about everybody getting hurt and injured.”
She and a friend followed a teacher, who she said took her hand as they cowered on the floor with the educator grabbing their hands to keep them close.
People stand outside the windows where shots were fired at Annunciation Catholic School. Getty Images
People pray at the memorials for the two students killed in the shooting. APJune’s father, Anders Holine, whose first-grade daughter Olive was also in the church, told the outlet he rushed to the school when he learned what was happening, and could still hear shots popping off from the parking lot.
Here's what we know about the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis
- Students had begun their first week of school at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, two days before the shooting.
- Robin Westman, a 23-year-old trans woman, opened fire through the stained glass windows on Wednesday morning during a celebratory back-to-school Mass filled with children.
- The shooting killed two children and injured at least 18 others, before Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
- Westman had written “Kill Donald Trump” and “for the children” on gun magazines, and posted videos of a handwritten manifesto.
- Westman’s mother had worked at the school.
“I saw a dad who works at the school and I said, ‘is the school locked down?’ and he said there’s a shooting at the church, and he said all the kids are in there, and I thought I was going to throw up,” said the anguished dad.
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After reuniting with his children, who were uninjured, Holine expressed how surreal it was to hear his daughter describe a mass shooting.
“It’s hard to believe that it was, you know, that we’re in reality right now. The feeling that I had searching was easily the worst feeling I’ve ever felt,” the dad told CBS.
He further told the outlet that he will not be rushing his daughters to return to school after the shooting.
“I just wanna show my girls that they can be feeling whatever they want to feel,” he said.
