Man misidentified online as Minnesota church shooter

"The shooter at the Minneapolis church has been identified as Clifford Thomas Phillps Jr.," says an August 27, 2025 post on X. "Phillips travelled from his home in Columbus, OH and attacked the chruch. Phillips is a radical leftist who runs the YouTube channel 'CTP Know the Truth.'"

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Screenshot from X taken August 28, 2025

Similar posts spread across X after a shooter sprayed bullets through the windows of the Annunciation Church, where dozens of young pupils from an affiliated Catholic school were attending a service to commemorate their first week back at school.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency is investigating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.

But authorities identified the perpetrator as Robin Westman, 23, whose name was legally changed from Robert Westman in 2020, according to court records that say the then-minor identified as a female and wished to reflect that.

Westman fired a rifle, shotgun, and pistol before dying by suicide in the parking lot.

Photos and videos of Westman show a different person than Phillips, who has remained active on social media since the shooting (archived here and here).

Phillips appears to reside in Ohio and operates a YouTube channel that shares content critical of US President Donald Trump (archived here, here and here).

The image in the posts was lifted from his Instagram account (archived here and here). It shows him wearing an Ohio State University shirt in 2024.

It was not clear why Phillips was mischaracterized as the Minnesota shooter. Previous social media posts accused him of associating with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and of carrying out shootings at Villanova University, the University of Colorado-Boulder and the University of Arkansas -- all of which turned out to be "swatting" hoaxes. Deliberate, false reports of campus shooters have plagued American schools with the start of a new academic year.

Following the publication of this fact-check, Phillips posted an August 28 YouTube video addressing the claims, which he sent to AFP via TikTok direct message in response to requests for comment (archived here).

"People on social media have been posting lies about me, the latest one that I had something to do with what happened with the Minnesota shooting," Phillips says in the video. "The fact that these people want to make jokes about it by putting me as the primary suspect of the shooting shows to me they are either obsessed with me or they are just plain simply, sick."

He said he was exploring his legal options and that he believed he was targeted "because I do not support Donald Trump and I am vocal about my disapproval with him."

Phillips had previously posted on X August 27 that he was "not surprised" he was misrepresented as the Minnesota attacker (archived here).

"But these idiots should know he's dead," he wrote.

He also responded to one account pushing the claim, urging the user to stop (archived here).

AFP has debunked past hoaxes misidentifying other shooters here.