‘A Day That Will Stay With Me’: JD Vance Meets With Grieving Families Of Annunciation Shooting

MINNEAPOLIS — A strong wind was blowing as Vice President JD Vance’s motorcade pulled up in front of a Minneapolis church. It blew the vice president’s tie over his shoulder as he walked, and scattered Usha Vance’s hair as she took her husband’s hand. 

High above them loomed Annunciation Catholic Church, where a frenzied shooter in his twenties opened fire on children attending the first school mass of the year. Two children were killed, and many more were injured. Vance and his wife each carried a bouquet to honor the slain children, and they walked slowly up the steps to the church, reading the sidewalk chalk messages spread out before them. Thousands of donated flowers lined the walkway.

They paused in front of a statue of Mary, whom the church is named after, setting their bouquets in a basket before her. Someone had placed a small bouquet in the statue’s hand, and a long rosary dangled from her arm. Vance pointed out the inscription above her head to his wife: “This is the house of God and the gate of heaven.” 

No one spoke as they looked up at the church in apparent prayer, Vance making the sign of the cross. Even the protestors across the street barely made a sound. Then the Vances quietly went towards the church to meet the families whose children had been taken from them forever. 

(Photo by Alex Wroblewski-Pool/Getty Images)

Ten-year-old Harper Moyski and 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel each had their own hopes and dreams, Vance reflected to reporters before he boarded Air Force Two to return to Washington. They were energetic, silly, beautiful children, beloved by their families, who never imagined they would lose them so soon.

Their friends commemorated them outside the church by writing little messages to the deceased youngsters on grave-like crosses erected under a little tent. 

“We will miss you,” a young hand wrote. 

“God be with you, I’m in your class,” scrawled another. 

“You were so loved,” the messages read, over and over and over. 

The vice president and his wife spent several hours speaking not only with Harper’s and Fletcher’s parents, but also with the parents of the injured children. They went to the Minnesota Children’s Hospital and met young Lydia Kaiser, who was recovering from surgery, and spoke with Weston Halsne, another victim, over the phone. 

The scene outside Annunciation Catholic Church, where the VP and Second Lady are currently paying their respects. Thousands of flowers line the walkway. Messages of love and hope are written in sidewalk chalk and painted on stones.

One reads: “God is our refuge and strength.” pic.twitter.com/wH0Az27B1a

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) September 3, 2025

The vice president described the visit as “heart breaking” but “gratifying,” sharing that the parents “opened up their lives, opened up their hearts” to the Vances, speaking about their children and about their families and about the community that has rallied around them. 

And they asked him, Vance said, to speak not of the “brutal maniac” who slaughtered their children, but to speak of the “innocent children who lost their lives, and were full of life, and were people, people with hopes and dreams in their own right.” 

He emphasized that message by speaking of the children himself. 

“I wish that we talked a lot more about Harper, who was a beautiful young girl, who had a beautiful smile, the kind of smile that would turn a bad day into a good one,” Vance reflected, adding that Harper was “very proud of the fact that she just had her first communion a couple years ago.”

“I also wish we talked a little bit more about Fletcher,” he went on. “Fletcher was a very rambunctious and energetic kid. Was a beautiful kid. Had an incredible head of hair…”

Fletcher’s father, Vance, revisited the chapel with him where the shooter killed his son. 

“That was the first time he had been in the chapel since his son was taken from him,” Vance said. 

And the vice president himself echoed the grieving parents’ request: “We should talk more about these kids. We should talk less about the shooter, the crazy person who took these children from us. We should talk about these kids, their hopes and their dreams, and the fact that they had a full life ahead of them that was cut short.” 

Lydia Kaiser, who received a visit from the vice president and the second lady on Wednesday, was just recovering from surgery. According to a GoFundMe set up in her name, Lydia was injured while she was protecting her little “buddy” — a younger student whom she was supposed to keep an eye on and help behave throughout mass.

“Her father, our community’s beloved gym teacher, was also in attendance and helped secure the room, to keep children safe, and stuck with them all until they were reunited with their families,” the GoFundMe says, “even while his daughter was entering the emergency room. Lydia and Harry are two heroes in our midst.” 

Weston wasn’t well enough to meet the vice president in person, but he and his family did speak with the Vances over the phone. Vance, who had maintained a somber demeanor the entire day, broke into a big smile when The Daily Wire asked about Weston. 

“Usha and I spoke to him,” Vance told The Daily Wire, as Usha also smiled. “He had just got out of surgery so we weren’t able to see Weston, but we did talk to him on the phone. Just a little boy, thank God full of life, happy, recovering well.”

U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks to the press after paying his respects to victims of the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting on September 3, 2025, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski-Pool/Getty Images)

“I told him, he has a 15 year old older brother, I said, you can tell him from the vice president of the United States that your older brother has to be nice to you for at least the next week,” the vice president said. “Weston was very excited to hear that. But just a really beautiful family and I’m glad that he’s doing well.” 

Yet even as Vance shared the message of the parents: to focus on their children and not on the shooter, the tragedy of that shooting and the many ways in which it could have been prevented loomed like a spectre over the day. 

Protestors littered the streets near the church, advocating for gun control. Across the street, big signs were taped to the fence facing Annunciation church, reading: “Protect kids, not guns.” Beside them hung a massive transgender flag — an acknowledgment of the shooter’s trans-identification.

Bloomberg’s Kate Sullivan asked if Vance had heard about Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz call for a special legislative session to consider potential gun laws, but Vance would not get mired in the politics of gun legislation, telling her, “I’m not going to tell Minnesota lawmakers or the governor exactly how they should respond to this tragedy.” 

He did say emphatically: “There is a strong desire from across the political spectrum to do something so that these shootings are less common.” 

The Daily Wire questioned Vance about the rise in trans-identifying shooters and whether authorities should be focusing on gender dysphoric individuals showing warning signs. Vance did not specifically mention the shooter’s gender identity issues, but he stressed that the parents he spoke with want authorities to be taking a serious look at the root causes. 

“Certainly we should be investigating people who are planning on targeting kids, and I think that one of the unfortunate lessons of this particular shooting is that this person who showed clear signs of derangement, slipped through the cracks,” Vance told The Daily Wire. 

He explained that the parents he spoke with came from across the political spectrum, describing them as “rational” and “reasonable” despite their grief. 

“Every single parent I spoke to wants something to happen,” he said. 

“I can’t imagine what I would be like in this moment of heartbreak, and all they asked is that we look very seriously at the root causes, that we look very seriously at the ways to prevent crazy people who are about to shoot up a school from getting access to firearms, these are things that a lot of us have talked about for a very long time.”

“These parents are grieving,” he added, “but they certainly want us to look at everything that we can possibly do so that the next family doesn’t have to deal with this.”

Tributes to Harper (10) and Fletcher (8), who Robert Westman shot and killed last week as they were praying at their first school mass of the year. pic.twitter.com/ivIMlivdjk

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) September 3, 2025

Both Vance and his wife appeared emotionally impacted by the weight of the day — Usha Vance looked particularly sad, and she didn’t speak to the reporters gathered under the wing of Air Force Two, returning to the plane with her husband with a smile and wave. 

Vance himself appeared to have a catch in his voice as he reflected on his takeaways from the day. 

“I’ve had a lot of good days, a lot of interesting days…but I’ve never had a day that will stay with me like this day did,” he said. 

One little girl remains in serious condition, Vance said, and he looked into the camera to issue a plea to his fellow Americans. 

“If you are the praying type, say a prayer for this innocent girl, who is actually in surgery right now, that the swelling will go down, that she will be ok, because she’s still in the fight for her life, and every single family to a person is desperate that the death toll which currently is at two, stays at two,” he said. 

As for himself, Vance knows that there is nothing he, or anyone else, can say that will take away the grief that these parents are feeling. He plans to honor these grieving parents and their innocent children, “by being a better dad, and hugging my kids tight tonight, and making sure that they know that their dad loves them.”

“Because there are two families who are not going to get that opportunity ever again,” he said. 

“There are families in Minneapolis who will never get to do that again.”