MINNEAPOLIS — The mother of the lone transgender gunman who killed two students and injured 17 others at the Annunciation Church and Catholic School on Wednesday morning was an employee at the school, police said.
While the motives of Robin Westman, 23, remain unclear, police identified the suspect’s mother as Mary Grace Westman, who spent five years working as a secretary at the Annunciation school in Minneapolis until she retired in 2021, according to a Facebook post and a blog on the church’s website.
Mary Grace Westman worked at the school where the shooting occurred. Facebook / Church of the Annunciation
“She has provided such wonderful hospitality, friendship and compassion to all who gathered for the last five years at Annunciation. You will be missed! Congratulations on your retirement!” the church wrote.
Robert L. Heleringer, Mary Grace’s brother and a former Republican representative in the Kentucky General Assembly, described their family’s strictly Catholic upbringing in multiple op-eds published in the 2010s.
Their mother would often host dinners with local priests and routinely lead prayers together before departing, Heleringer wrote in the Louisville Courier-Journal, noting how their lives were “enriched by their company.”
Heleringer also served at the church their family belonged to growing up in Kentucky, according to the articles.
Robin Westman murdered 2 students in the shooting. Obtained by NY Post
Law enforcement officers work at the scene of a shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 27, 2025. AFP via Getty Images
After graduating from a Catholic high school, Heleringer attended Xavier University, a Catholic Jesuit school, where he started to grapple with his faith once his mother “cut [him] loose.”
Still, he found his way back to his faith thanks to his mother’s gentle stewardship and support at Xavier.
Here is the latest on the mass shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school:
“I was cast adrift, spiritually speaking, to find my own way … the truth and the light,” he wrote in the Courier-Journal.
In 1980, shortly after graduating from Xavier, he landed a seat in Kentucky’s General Assembly that he held until the districts were redrawn in 2002.
Heleringer reflected extensively on the child sexual abuse scandals that rocked Catholic dioceses across the country at the time, including some at Louisville parishes.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey sits outside Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., August 27, 2025. Steven Garcia for NY Post
Families and loved ones reunite outside the police barricades after a shooting at Annunciation Church, which is also home to an elementary school, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., August 27, 2025. REUTERS
“Perhaps our collective shame is the price that must be paid for the unspeakable evil that has taken place on consecrated ground,” he wrote.
In 2023, three years after Westman legally changed his name from Robert to Robin, Heleringer condemned conservative Republicans’ “vendetta” against the LGBTQ+ community and their identities that he asserted were “nobody’s public business.”
“This is a contradictory look for pro-life Republican legislators who believe that all human life, born or pre-born, is sacred. One cannot simultaneously defend innocent life and demean the lives of our equally innocent gay sisters and brothers as nothing more than printed names on a birth certificate,” he wrote in the Courier-Journal.
A map shows the route from the shooter’s home to the Catholic school. Tam Nguyen / NYPost Design
The Post reached out to Heleringer for comment.
Westman, who died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was not previously known to law enforcement, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters at a press conference.
The deranged gunman posted disturbing videos — that including showing pages of his sick handwritten manifesto — on his since-deleted YouTube and had “kill Donald Trump” and “for the children” scrawled on gun magazines.
Much of the twisted messages were written in code that used Cyrillic characters and English phonetic words that was translated by The Post.
The Westmans live less than a mile from Annunciation in a small Tudor-style home set on a quiet tree-lined street.
Neighbor Stephen Jeglosky told The Post it was “jaw-dropping” to learn of the horror Robin inflicted on Wednesday.
Jeglosky, 35, recalled encountering the Westmans two years ago while they were celebrating what seemed to be a graduation.
“They flagged me down as I was on my way to my apartment and asked me to take a couple of group photos,” said Jeglosky. “They seemed like a great family.
“There were kids running around, parents drinking, music playing. Their little chihuahua nipped me in the ankle. They gave me a beer and I went on my way. I guess you never know who somebody is,” he said.