What is really evil and cowardly is that these children were slaughtered by a shooter who could not even see them, says police chief Brian O'Hara.
At a press conference the day after the deed, the police and politicians tried to answer the many questions that were asked about the unimaginable event in a church where a large number of school children had gathered for morning mass.
Hated us all
Brian O'Hara says that the police found 119 cartridges from two rifles, and a bullet that got stuck in the chamber of a pistol. And if the church had not routinely locked the doors before the mass, the death toll could have been much higher.
The shooter saw the attack as a way to target the most vulnerable, in short, the shooter wanted to see children suffer, says Minnesota's deputy justice minister Joseph Thompson.
A clear motive is otherwise still lacking, he says.
I will not give the attacker's words weight by repeating them. They are terrible and evil.
But in short, the shooter seems to have hated us all. The shooter's heart was filled with hate.
Do not mention the name
Thompson does not mention the 23-year-old by name, and police chief Brian O'Hara asks all media to stop publishing it.
The intention of the shooter's actions was to become notorious and infamous, he says and describes the shooter as sickly obsessed with mass shootings.
In addition to the two children who died in the deed, 18 people were injured, of which 15 children between 6 and 15 years. It is one more injured than previously reported, an injured child was taken to a hospital by private individuals and has not been included in the reporting earlier.
