Who Was Mary Grace Westman? Minneapolis School Shooter Robin Westman’s Mom Was an Employee at the School Where He Killed 2 Students

The mother of the lone transgender shooter, who opened fire at Annunciation Church and Catholic School on Wednesday morning—killing two students and wounding 17 others—was an employee of the school, police said.

Authorities said the motive of Robin Westman, 23, is still unclear, but confirmed that his mother, Mary Grace Westman, had worked as a secretary at Annunciation School in Minneapolis for five years before retiring in 2021, according to a Facebook post and a church blog. “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.

Killing at His Mother’s Workplace

Mary Grace’s brother, Robert L. Heleringer—a former Republican lawmaker in the Kentucky General Assembly—wrote in several op-eds during the 2010s about their family’s deeply traditional Catholic upbringing.

Their mother often invited local priests over for dinner and always gathered the family for prayers before they left, saying their presence “enriched our lives,” Heleringer recalled in the Louisville Courier-Journal. According to the articles, Heleringer also took part in service at the church their family attended while growing up in Kentucky.

After finishing his studies at a Catholic high school, Heleringer enrolled at Xavier University, a Jesuit institution, where he began to grapple with his faith after his mother “let [him] go.”

However, with her patient guidance and encouragement during his time at Xavier, he eventually he found his way back to his faith.

“I was cast adrift, spiritually speaking, to find my own way … the truth and the light,” he wrote in the Courier-Journal.

In 1980, soon after completing his degree at Xavier, he secured a seat in Kentucky’s General Assembly, where he served until redistricting in 2002.

During that period, Heleringer wrote at length about the child sexual abuse scandals that shook Catholic dioceses nationwide, including cases within Louisville parishes.

“Perhaps our collective shame is the price that must be paid for the unspeakable evil that has taken place on consecrated ground,” he wrote.

Family’s Catholic Roots

In 2023, three years after Westman officially changed his name from Robert to Robin, Heleringer slammed conservative Republicans for what he called a “vendetta” against the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that their identities were a private matter and “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.

However, Heleringer’s stance doesn’t appear to stem from his contact with Westman because the two “barely knew” one another because the families had always resided in different locations, he told the Associated Press. “I wish Westman had shot me instead of innocent schoolchildren,” the distraught lawyer continued.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told reporters at a press conference that Westman, who died at the scene, was not known to the police.

The insane shooter had the words “kill Donald Trump” and “for the children” scribbled on gun magazines and posted chilling videos on his since-deleted YouTube account, including pages of his sick handwritten manifesto.

The majority of the twisted messages were written in code. The Westmans live in a modest Tudor-style house in a peaceful neighborhood with trees less than a mile from Annunciation.