Looking Back on a Day of Heart-Wrenching Moments

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

What We Lived Through

As you read the reports of Wednesday's assault on Annunciation Catholic School in south Minneapolis, an attack that left two children dead, 17 children and adults injured, and an entire community traumatized, certain details will stick with you.

Maybe it’s this anecdote from Reid Forgrave’s thorough reporting in the Star Tribune today on how the horrific event unfolded yesterday: “One second-grader thought it must have been a robber trying to steal the prizes from the century-old church’s upcoming SeptemberFest.”

Or, elsewhere in Forgrave’s piece, a quote like this from Annunciation parent Shea McAdaragh, who told the Strib, “The thing that’s going to stick with me was when I said ‘you guys can get up,’ and I knew some kids weren’t going to get up.”

Or maybe it’s the story of Amy Forchas, an ICU nurse who went into work at HCMC yesterday unaware that her daughter, Sophia, would be rushed into trauma care.

Or maybe it's Jesse Merkel, the father of one of the children who was killed, Fletcher, saying, "The past day, I’ve heard many stories of the swift and heroic actions of children and adults alike, from inside the church. Without these people and their selfless actions, this could have been a tragedy of many magnitudes more."

Or maybe it’s Dr. Jon Gayken, an HCMC trauma surgeon telling the Strib’s Jeremy Olson about the nurse manager who “went into the CT scanner” with a frightened child, who “stood there and held her hand and then held her hair while she went through the scanner, so she wouldn’t have to go through alone.” (The Strib’s work, as it often is in such all-hands-on-deck moments, is demonstrating what only a fully funded professional newsroom can accomplish when a story like this happens.)

Or maybe it’s something from this commentary written by 16-year-old high school junior Lydia Ganser, detailing a life of active shooter drills and alerts of shooters at nearby schools and demanding action from adults. 

Or maybe it’s some eerie revelation or another about shooter Robin Westman, whose background and possible motivations law enforcement and media alike have been piecing together. As Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson put it, “The shooter appeared to hate all of us,” with the exception of the "the most notorious school shooters and mass murderers in our country's history."

Or maybe it’s just the faces that stick with you, of children or parents or parishioners or bystanders, faces whose names you don’t even know but whose stories you can read in their expressions.

Regardless of which aspect of this heartbreaking event gets under your skin, you can be sure that it will resurface for you at some unexpected and perhaps inopportune time, maybe tomorrow, maybe weeks from now.

Frey, Ellison Call for Assault Weapons Ban

Following yesterday's shooting at Annunciation, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is calling for "a statewide and a federal ban" on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. 

"There is no reason that someone should be able to reel off 30 shots before they even have to reload," the mayor said at a press conference today, where he was joined by parents and anti-gun violence groups. "We're not talking about your father's hunting rifle, here."

Frey also spoke with NPR's Morning Edition, where he said that if the state and federal governments aren't willing to take that stand, Minneapolis sure as shit is:

[L]ook, if the federal government or the state government is not going to take the necessary steps to protect my constituents, let me do it. Give the city, give Minneapolis, give cities around the country the ability to take action to keep their constituents safe. […] If there's other levels of government that don't want to take action, let us do it. 

But maybe the state will be willing? Also speaking with Morning Edition, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison advocated for an assault weapons ban and called for tighter gun laws overall; he believes it's possible there are laws that could have stopped Westman.

"Well, first of all, I think if you start buying a bunch of guns, somebody ought to be alerted," Ellison says. "And I also think that if you are as disturbed as Robin Westman clearly was, there ought to be some way for somebody to call and say, 'Robin might not need access to a gun right now.'"

How You Can Help

Tragedies like yesterday’s mass shooting can leave you feeling helpless, but there are small things you can do. To start, there is a critical blood shortage, and the American Red Cross and Memorial Blood Centers are currently accepting blood donations.

Donations are also being sought for medical care for the shooting victims and other expenses for their families are also being sought to cover medical and other expenses. GoFundMe has established a hub of verified accounts. At the moment, there are three confirmed accounts for Sophia Forchas (mentioned above), Endre Gunter, and Victor Greenawalt. 

If you know of any other ways to help, please let us know in the comments.

Very Good State Fair TikTok

That's enough heaviness for today, hm? Let's take a deep breath and enjoy this incredibly sweet, incredibly viral TikTok from the Minnesota State Fair. There is a lot of goodness out there in the world, even in these dark times. There are kind and thoughtful and generous people, and crucially, root beer floats.