MINNEAPOLIS — Mass was underway Wednesday morning to mark the beginning of the academic year at Annunciation Catholic School when bullets started flying through the glass.
That the shooting, which killed two students and wounded nearly two dozen other people, occurred as Mass was being celebrated is something the Rev. Dennis Zehren is still struggling to process.
“I will be reflecting on that for the rest of my life,” Zehren said in remarks before Saturday’s Mass, the first for the parish since the shooting. “It’s something I will never be able to unsee.”
Zehren, who was leading Mass on Wednesday at Annunciation Catholic Church, recalled rushing toward the sound of the bullets, hopeful that he could help in some way.
“If I could have got between those bullets and the kids,” Zehren said, “that’s what I was hoping to do.”
Students Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. At least 15 other children, ages 6 to 15, were injured alongside three adult parishioners.
Six people remained hospitalized Friday, including a child in critical condition and an adult in serious condition, according to Hennepin Healthcare. Police have said all of the wounded victims are expected to survive.
The suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police have said. Authorities have not identified a clear motive. Joseph Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, said the suspect was full of hate and was obsessed with the idea of killing children.
On Saturday evening, students and parishioners, eager to pray and mourn together, gathered for the first service since the attack. It was held in the parish's auditorium, a separate campus building from where the shooting occurred.
Zehren wept as he recalled the congregation being told to stay down as rounds rang out from what police have described as a semiautomatic rifle.
“The voices cried out, down, down, get low. Stay down. Stay down. Don’t get up,” he said. “When we were down there, in that low place, Jesus showed us something. He showed us, I am the Lord, even here.”
The congregation, Zehren hoped, put evil in its place.
“Together in that low place, we looked with Jesus into the eyes of the forces of darkness and death and evil,” he said. “And Jesus pointed, and he said, ‘See, can’t you see how weak it is? Can’t you see how desperate it is? Can’t you see that this can never last?’”
Zehren urged parishioners in their darkest hour to welcome the “light of a new day.”
“One little moment of darkness has brought forth a light that is far beyond anything we’ve experienced before,” he said. “I’ve never in all my years experienced such an outpouring of love and light and hope.”
Archbishop Bernard Hebda hoped that returning to Mass after the shooting would help the church’s parishioners and children reclaim a sense of normality.
“It’s that return to those things that are so familiar to us that I think is important,” he said before Saturday’s service.
Charlie Lyman, a parishioner whose three children attended Annunciation, said after Mass that the church has been a source of strength for family and the Southwest Minneapolis community for decades and will remain so.
“This place instills in us a sense of great faith to be good to one another, to help each other, to be kind to one another,” said Lyman, whose family helped build the church.
Tess Rada attended the Mass with her 8-year-old daughter, Lila Hostetler, a student at Annunciation, and said it was reassuring to hear Zehren share his feelings.
“Just hearing the emotion in his voice was very — it was nice,” she said. “It was like, you know these emotions aren’t escaping anyone. We all feel it, but we can feel it together.”
Dennis Romero reported from San Diego, and Selina Guevara and Maggie Vespa from Minneapolis.
