Disturbing revelations since the Annunciation Catholic School massacre paint a chilling portrait of Robin Westman as a deeply deranged young man who was by any yardstick a ticking time bomb — prompting many as-yet-unanswered questions about how such obvious warning signs were missed.
Westman, 23, had a sick fascination with school shootings and Adolf Hitler from an early age, and bounced between high schools as a teen while harboring suicidal feelings and saying he believed “life is pain.”
In his sprawling, crazed manifesto, scheduled to post on YouTube at the time of the killings, Westman voiced a lifelong admiration for mass murderers, particularly Adam Lanza, perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
“Sandy Hook was my favorite, I think, exposure of school shootings,” he wrote of the worst elementary school shooting in US history, which happened when he was in fourth grade.
The deceased killer’s macabre affinity for death continued into adolescence, where Westman was known to terrify classmates by walking around saying “praise Hitler,” former classmate Josefina Sanchez told local outlet KTSP, saying she’s still tormented by how “erratic” and “off” Westman was when they were briefly friends in seventh grade at a middle school in St. Paul.
She fought back tears at the thought she could have raised the alarm and possibly prevented Wednesday’s mass shooting in which two children were killed and 18 other people were wounded, calling Westman’s behavior “demonic.”
In an apparent suicide note addressed to “my family and friends,” Westman, who was transgender, described himself as “corrupted by this world,” and admitted he has “learned to hate what life is. Life is love, life is pain,” the rambling scrawl read in part.
“I am not well. I am not right. I am a sad person, haunted by these thoughts that do not go away. I know this is wrong, but I can’t seem to stop myself,” the letter continued.
“I am severely depressed and have been suicidal for years.”
A former student at Annunciation, Westman attended at least three different high schools, ranging from a $25,000-per-year all-male Catholic prep school to a no-nonsense military academy to a public high school, from which he graduated in 2021.
Video of the graduation ceremony pictures Westman but he does not appear in person to accept his diploma.
The Post reached out to MTS Secondary School, St. Thomas Academy and Southwest High School to ask if he had received counseling or support for behavioral issues. No one responded except for MTS — only to confirm the dates he attended, spanning two months in 2017.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, whose district covers many of the Twin Cities’ outer northern and western suburbs, was baffled that Westman was able to apparently fly under the radar for years.
“Somebody had to know,” Emmer said Thursday, “somebody in his neighborhood, somebody in his family, somebody in his network, somebody had to know that he had these serious mental health issues and why didn’t someone speak up? Why didn’t somebody offer him some help?”
Westman’s parents, James and Mary Grace, divorced in 2013, when he was 11 years old. Westman at one point lived in a quaint home on a quiet, tree-lined street in Minneapolis, less than a mile from Annunciation.
Mary Grace Westman, who lives in Florida and worked at Annunciation as a secretary for five years before retiring in 2021, has not responded to police attempts to contact her, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Thursday.
She had petitioned to have her son’s name changed from Robert to Robin in 2020 — when he was 17, the judge writing, “minor child identifies as a female,” court records show.
James Westman, who also lives in the Minneapolis home, has been in contact with law enforcement but details of their communication were not revealed by authorities.
“Only recently have I lost all hope and decided to perform my final action against this world,” Westman wrote in his apparent suicide note, indicating he believed he was “dying of cancer.”
“I don’t want to kneel down for the injustices. of this world. I want to die. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees, constantly in pain.
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