(MINNEAPOLIS) — When Pat Scallen heard gunshots around the corner from his Minneapolis home, “I didn’t know exactly what it was at first, but after about the 10th shot, I knew something was wrong,” he recalled.
Scallen raced to the Annunciation Catholic School, where he said he saw a magazine on the ground by the church.
“It was eerily quiet. And then I immediately turned and ran to the front of the church, and right at that time everyone was coming out. And it was chaotic,” Scallen told “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
Streaming from the church were children suffering emotional and physical wounds, he said, adding that he saw a boy and a girl who had been shot in the head as well as a girl shot in the neck.
“They were very frightened. They wanted their mom and dad,” he said. “And I just, I sat them down and just tried to keep them calm, and I was watching them close to see if there’d be any change in their status.”
Scallen said the girl shot in the head asked him, “Please just hold my hand.”
“I did,” he said.
An 8-year-old and 10-year-old who were sitting in pews were killed and 17 others were injured in the Wednesday morning mass shooting, police said. The shooter opened fire through a church window during a Mass that marked the first week of school.
Fourteen of the injured victims were children ages 6 to 15, and the three adults who were shot were parishioners in their 80s, police said. All of those injured are expected to survive, police said.
The shooter, identified by the FBI as 23-year-old Robin Westman, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. A motive remains under investigation.
Scallen said the Annunciation Catholic School is “one of the premiere schools in the city and state” and is “integral to the neighborhood.”
“There’s a spirit here, and I know they’ll be grieving for awhile, but this place, they’ll come back,” he said.
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