Lily Burrows of Minneapolis places flowers Thursday at the growing memorial for those killed and injured at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis. (Aaron Lavinsky/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
A tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on March 15, 2024, left two children dead and injured 17 others, plunging the community into chaos. Laura DuSchane, who is eight months pregnant, faced a harrowing race against time to find her three-year-old son, Rory, as gunfire echoed nearby.
DuSchane had just dropped Rory off for his third day of preschool when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots from her home. After settling down on her couch, the rapid bursts of gunfire shattered the ordinary morning. “It felt like eternity,” DuSchane recalled, as she leapt into action, scrambling outside for a better view. Smoke clouded the area surrounding Annunciation Church, and her neighbors stood frozen, clearly shaken.
“I yelled at them, ‘What do I do? My kid is in the school?’” she said in an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune. Driven by instinct, she sprinted towards the school despite warnings from others to turn back. “I said, ‘I’m running up there. I have to go find my kid,’” she recounted.
As she ran, DuSchane attempted to call 911, but her calls failed to connect. She reached out to her husband, Patrick, conveying the urgency of the situation. “There’s a school shooting at Annunciation,” she told him as squad cars flooded the block.
DuSchane encountered scenes of horror as she approached the school. “I had run past a lot of trauma already,” she noted. She witnessed children emerging from the church, some bloodied, and felt a deep sense of urgency to keep moving. The day would ultimately see a total of 20 victims, including the tragic deaths of 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski, both of whom succumbed to gunshot wounds at the scene. Fortunately, most of the injured, aged between 6 and 15, are expected to survive.
Despite the chaos, DuSchane pressed on, unaware that the shooter was firing from outside the church. Children’s screams filled the air as she spotted another parent and together they charged towards the school. DuSchane held the door for a teacher carrying a first-aid kit and entered Rory’s preschool classroom.
“There’s an active shooter, and we need to barricade this room,” she informed the teacher. Even though it had been years since she practiced active-shooter drills, her instincts kicked in. The teacher, Hannah Rausch, who had just begun her role, quickly organized the class into a quiet game, keeping the 17 children calm and still.
Minutes later, news arrived that the shooter was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound behind the church. Outside, neon posters reading “FAMILY” pointed parents towards a reunification site in the church basement. DuSchane led Rory’s classmates downstairs, holding hands with another child until their parents arrived.
Meanwhile, parents flocked to the school, some running, others staggering, faces wet with tears. DuSchane’s husband was among those searching for their children. Officers began urging families who had already been reunited to move aside, allowing space for others still in distress. “I only had to feel that feeling for about 15 minutes, and that was the worst 15 minutes of my entire life,” DuSchane reflected.
Rory, still too young to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation, merely understood that something terrible had happened. “My child does not know what a shooter is, and doesn’t know what a gun is,” DuSchane explained. To help him make sense of the trauma, she framed it in simple terms, saying, “There was a monster at the school, and the police took the monster away.”
As the community grapples with the aftermath of this devastating event, the stories of those directly affected highlight the fear and resilience that emerged in the face of unimaginable circumstances.
