Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed Thursday that he has ordered an investigation into whether drugs that transgender shooter Robin Westman was taking during his transition could have played “a role” in his depraved violence.
“We are doing those kind of studies now,” he told “Fox & Friends” when asked if it was possible drugs taken during Westman’s transition played “a role” in him shooting up his former Catholic school’s first Mass of the year Wednesday.
“We are launching studies into their potential contribution,” he said in a response to a question noting that another recent school shooter, Audrey Hale, was also transgender.
The Health and Human Services secretary did not reveal if it was known what drugs Westman or Hale had taken, if any. However, he noted a wider concern about Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) used to treat depression.
“Some of the SSRI drugs and some other psychiatric drugs might be contributing to violence,” he warned.
“Many of them have black-box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. So we can’t exclude those as a culprit, and those are the kind of studies we are doing,” he said.
Such studies had been slowed by strict patient confidentiality rules, he noted — while stressing that his department had authority to go around them to investigate possible links between such medications and mental diseases
“There was no time in the past when people would walk into a church or a classroom and start shooting people,” he said. “It’s not really happening in other countries, it’s happening here. And we need to look at all of the potential culprits that might be contributing to that.”
The FBI is investigating the mass shooting as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics, Director Kash Patel said on Wednesday.
Westman, 23, who changed his name from Robert to Robin by deed poll in 2020, described having suicidal thoughts for years — and that he wished he’d never transitioned.
His cowardly crime has several similarities to the mass shooting that Hale, 28, carried out in 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Like Westman, Hale was also transgender — having transitioned from female to male — and was a former pupil at the Christian school she shot up. She also drew detailed maps and left a twisted manifesto.
Likewise, Westman had also been a student at the school he attacked — the Annunciation Catholic School and Church — and his mom had also worked there between 2016 and her retirement in 2021. Like Hale, he also had no criminal record.
The killer barricaded the doors during the first school Mass of the academic year and fired dozens of bullets through the stained glass windows of the church.
The two murdered children, ages 8 and 10, were praying on church pews when they were killed.
Westman, dressed in black and camouflage, took his own life in the church’s parking lot, Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told reporters on Wednesday.
Of the 17 others wounded, 14 are children. Two of the children remain in a critical condition, but all are expected to survive.
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