MINNEAPOLIS — Calm and friendly — chatty, even, with customers and staff alike — Robin Westman casually browsed rifles at a St. Louis Park gun shop just days before murdering two children and injuring 21 others at Annunciation Catholic Church.

The 23-year-old appeared knowledgeable about guns, speaking with three of the employees at Frontiersman Sports on Saturday, Aug. 23 before purchasing a pistol, Frontiersman Sports owner Kory Krause said in an interview.

Krause provided the Minnesota Star Tribune with the security footage of Westman’s 40-minute visit. He said his staff was stunned because they didn’t detect any issues that would indicate the 23-year-old was planning to carry out a mass shooting.

“What could we have done? Did we miss anything?” Krause said in an interview at the store late last week. “Going over and over the video and everything that happened, really it just comes back to the answer of no.”

Westman drove to Annunciation Catholic Church in south Minneapolis four days later and unleashed a flurry of bullets through the stained glass windows before taking her own life. Krause said that the ammo and pistol purchased at his shop, a Brazilian-made .38 Special revolver, was not used in the shooting.

Westman used an assault-style rifle, a shotgun and a pistol in the shooting, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said.

Frontiersman Sports is a short drive from a St. Louis Park house that Westman was staying at recently, and sits in a busy stretch of road just south of Interstate 394.

The footage, first reported by KSTP-TV, shows Westman park a gray van in the rear parking lot, enter the store and immediately start browsing. Her hair was tied in a bun and she wore a green shirt from a former employer, Rise medical cannabis dispensary. Text on the back read, “A place for well-being.”

As Westman strolled a little after 12:30 p.m., she looked through boxes of ammunition and examined a variety of rifles, looking down the barrel of each as she pointed them upwards.

Westman then perused the glass cases with handguns, asking the employees to take some out for examining.

What stood out to Krause, he said, is Westman behaved like any typical customer to all three of the employees there that day. Westman looked at all of the guns and ammunition, including hunting rifles, and ignored the tactical weapons such as AR-15s.

“(Westman) literally acted like we see with a lot of our regulars, and even those that have been in here for the first time,” Krause said.

While speaking with three different employees, Westman made comments about the pistol she bought being for defense in her home, Krause said. Westman picked “female” on the federal form to purchase a pistol that day, the store owner noted. The form “came up as a proceed almost immediately” instead of a “deny” or “delay” decision, Krause said.

Westman carried the gun and a box of ammo out of the shop in a plastic bag, got in the van, and drove away.

Krause said his staff are experts at detecting red flags in order to deny selling someone a hand gun. The store does not discriminate selling to anyone because of their race, ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation, but will do so based on “behavior and actions.”

“We profile hard-core on behavior, and that can be, ‘Is there a suicidal vibe?’ ‘Is there a homicidal vibe?’” Krause said. “Any kind of mental instability, that’s something that they’re very, very much watching out for.”

Investigators found numerous journal entries where Westman obsessed over school shootings, was questioning her gender identity, and wrote in one entry she was “lost in despair and disdain for this world.” The Star Tribune is referring to Westman with she/her pronouns because available legal documents list her gender as female.

Krause said it was a shocking discovery because there were no visual signs.

“That’s what blows us away is the fact that it was so well acted and well hidden,” Krause said.

The same day as the shooting, federal investigators visited Frontiersman Sports and asked the manager for any security footage of a visit by Westman, which was quickly provided. He said it was “creepy” reviewing the footage himself and that the staff was shaken by the shooting.

Krause detailed how his store has assisted law enforcement in the past. Years ago he said, the shop helped police catch a man who was making straw purchases of guns and transferring them to gang members.

He noted that the rifle and shotgun Westman used at Annunciation was purchased from two local retailers and that it’s unclear to him where the pistol used was bought.

Asked what changes he wants to help prevent mass shooters from obtaining guns, Krause said he supports the United States adding a confidential mental health evaluation in conjunction with the background checks currently used by the federal government.

“I have a daughter. I have a family too, as does everybody (at the store),” Krause said. “We’re all in support of something that would prevent people like that from getting those.”

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