‘It Was Really Scary’: 5th Grader Shares Heartbreaking Story of Catholic Church Attack

A fifth grade student shared chilling eyewitness testimony of the “really scary” moment a gunman opened fire inside a Catholic church in Minneapolis — an attack that sent one of his friends to the hospital and other students scrambling to a nearby gymnasium for safety — during a local television interview on Wednesday.

“It was like shots fired, and then he kind of like got under the pews, [and] he kind of shot through the stained glass windows,” Weston Halsne, a 10-year-old student at Annunciation Catholic Church, told WCCO, a local CBS affiliate. “It was really scary.”

CNN broadcast footage of the WCCO interview soon after it aired.

The boy continued: “We waited 10 to 5 minutes, I don’t really know, and then we went to the gym, and then the doors locked, just to make sure [the shooter] didn’t come. We waited in the gym for more news and everyone was okay – or most people were.”

Halsne then said his “friend got hit in the back” by a bullet.

“I was super scared for him, but I think now he is okay,” Halsne added.

The attacker, according to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, killed two children, ages 8 and 10, and injured another 17 people. Local news outlet KSTP later identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman. O’Hara, during his press conference earlier on Wednesday, said the “coward” shooter was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol; the shooter killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to O’Hara.

You can watch Halsne’s brief interview courtesy of CNN above.