‘Rip & Tear.’

The haunting slogan was one of several phrases inscribed on the ammunition magazines of transgender shooter Robin Westman, 23, who fatally shot two children and injured 18 others at a Minneapolis church and school on Wednesday. 

The slogan originates from the 1990s video game Doom, a first-person shooter where players battle hordes of demons amidst chaos and gunfire. In the gaming world, this catchphrase embodies unchecked, rampant violence.

Westman’s nod to this iconic video game series isn’t the first instance Doom and its catchphrases have been linked to real-life violence. The game garnered national attention in 1999, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, which resulted in 13 deaths and over 20 injuries.

Teenage Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold frequently alluded to the game. Harris, in his journals, expressed a twisted wish to replicate the game’s violent chaos in reality, writing: ‘It will be like f**king Doom. I want to kill a lot of people.’

Investigators discovered that Harris had created his own Doom levels, which he shared online. These custom maps, laden with arenas and traps, were later cited as further proof of how the game deeply influenced his and Klebold’s violent fantasies.

Over the years, researchers have often pointed to Columbine as a model for the numerous school and mass shootings that have since followed. Many attackers have studied Harris and Klebold, emulating their language, methods, and symbolism, a trend known as the ‘Columbine effect.’

While an investigation remains ongoing into the tragedy at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, the early signs indicate Westman may have followed a similar path.

Alongside the ‘Rip and Tear’ reference, Westman left behind a video, a detailed manifesto, and hundreds of pages of ramblings seething with hatred for almost everyone – echoing the venomous writings of Harris.

The creators of Doom, iD Software, have been approached for comment. 

In 1999, as a national debate raged over whether violent video games were to blame for Columbine, the company refused to engage. ‘We have no comment at all,’ co-founder John Carmack told the New York Times.

Years later, fellow co-founder John Romero explained their silence. ‘It was a horrible, horrible situation,’ he told Shortlist in 2024. ‘But we knew that we were not the cause… Millions of people play Doom, and nothing like this has happened. It’s just that those kids had issues.’

In the years that followed, politicians and parents seized on violent video games as a catchall target to explain away Harris and Klebold’s senseless rampage, claiming they were almost certainly radicalized by Doom and other games.

Two years after Columbine, the families of the victims sued iD Software and 10 other companies – including game developers and movie makers – for $5 billion, claiming their products influenced the gunmen to kill.

For them, the evidence was apparent. In Harris’ handwritten journals, investigators found countless violent rants, details of disturbing sexual and murderous fantasies, and planning notes. Many of the vile ramblings specifically referenced Doom.

‘The real Doom,’ Harris wrote in one such passage, fantasizing about the slaughter of his classmates.

Another passage read: ‘Killing people feels like it’s better than sex… I guarantee you it will be just as good, if not better. I love it. Doom is such a Godlike experience. Killing everything in sight.’

Harris maintained a personal website hosted on AOL, where he shared Doom WADs (custom levels he designed), as well as bomb-making instructions and violent writings.

Law enforcement also recovered video recordings Harris and Klebold made in the weeks leading up to the massacre, which are commonly known as the Basement Tapes.

The footage remains under seal, but transcripts from the tapes show that Harris nicknamed the sawn-off shotgun ‘Arlene’, after his favorite character from the game.

‘It’s going to be like f**king Doom,’ Harris says. ‘Haa! That f**king shotgun is straight out of Doom!’

To some, Harris’ frequent references to Doom showed he explicitly plotted his massacre with the gameplay experience of Doom in mind, using it as a template to commit indiscriminate mass murder.

The argument that violent games could serve as training grounds for killers was bolstered at the time by revelations that the US Marine Corps had briefly used a modified version of Doom – known as ‘Marine Doom’ – as a simulator to train recruits.

Critics seized on the program as proof that the game could condition youngsters for real violence.

Military officials, however, stressed that the software was never intended to teach marksmanship skills, but simply to reinforce communication and unit coordination in a virtual setting.

The billion-dollar lawsuit filed against iD Software was eventually tossed out by a judge, who ruled that video games and movies are not subject to product liability laws.

Debates over the impact of violent video games on young people have continued to proliferate in the years since, often in the wake of mass shootings.

​But decades of research have produced little evidence to support any direct cause between the consumption of violent media and the enactment of real-world violence.

For Westman, potential parallels between his depraved acts in Minnesota and Columbine do not end with a Doom reference.

Police are currently investigating a series of videos posted online by the shooter, which describe an obsession with school shootings, show a rambling written statement, and numerous decorated guns.

The videos were uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday, around the time the shooting began, but have since been deleted.

The footage shows Westman paging through a notebook displaying a shooting target with Jesus’ image on it, and showcasing a collection of guns, magazines, and ammunition laid out on a bed.

Various messages and racial and religious slurs were written on the weapons. Other messages included ‘psycho killer’ and ‘kill Donald Trump.’

One magazine listed the names of six notorious mass shooters, including Adam Lanza, who killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and Robert Bowers, who was convicted of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. 

The names of Klebold and Harris do not appear in the footage.

In Westman’s notebook – written partly in English, Cyrillic script and Russian – expresses feelings of self-hatred and wishes to die. Other entries described the author becoming ‘morbidly obsessed’ with other school shooters.

‘In regards to my motivation behind the attack, I can’t really put my finger on a specific purpose,’ says Westman. ‘It definitely wouldn’t be for racism or white supremacy. I don’t want to do it to spread a message. I do it to please myself. I do it because I am sick.’

Officials said Thursday that Westman left behind hundreds of pages of writing, expressing hatred toward almost every group imaginable, including black people, Mexicans, Christians and Jews.

‘The shooter appeared to hate all of us,’ Acting US Attorney for the district, Joseph Thompson said. ‘More than anything, the shooter wanted to kill children. The shooter was obsessed with killing children.’

Like Westman, Harris left behind a manifesto and hundreds of pages of hate-soaked writing, seething with contempt for almost everyone around him.

‘I hate almost every single person in the world. Some of them are cool, like a handful, and OK, maybe ten. But I hate everything else. I hate the f**king world,’ wrote Harris.

Harris’ writings often repeatedly returned to one theme: an all-consuming desire to kill everyone and anyone – not just his classmates – in a warped fantasy of ‘natural selection.’

‘I have a goal to destroy as much as possible… I will rig up explosives all over town and detonate each one of them at will after I mow down a whole area full of you snotty ass rich motherf**kers.’

And while Westman personalized weapons with references to motive, Harris and Klebold personalized their clothing.

On the day of the attack, they each wore black T-shirts emblazoned with stark slogans – Harris with the words ‘Natural Selection’ and Klebold with ‘Wrath’ – deliberately chosen to broadcast the ideology behind their massacre.

They also arrived in long black trench coats that not only concealed their sawed-off shotguns and ammunition but also projected the sinister, outsider image they wanted to cultivate.

Westman’s attack unfolded at the Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday morning. Westman graduated from the school in 2017, and his mom, Mary Grace Westman, used to work at the church but retired five years ago, social media posts show.

Dozens of children were worshipping in the pews when the shots rang out at 8:30am.

Westman, armed with three guns and dressed in all black, fired through the church’s stained-glass windows, killing 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and 10-year-old Harper Moyski.

Westman died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Another 18 people were hurt, including 15 fellow Annunciation students between the ages of 6 and 15. Three adults, all in their 80s, were also shot.

Sources told CNN evidence suggests Westman meticulously planned the attack, conducting dry runs and surveying the school to scope out security measures.

Westman allegedly pretended to be interested in reconnecting with the Catholic faith to gain access to the building and gain the trust of those working there.

Westman’s journal describes looking at door handles, calculating how to best lock victims inside, and noting where teachers were located.

Westman also detailed that he had suffered from depression and faced suicidal and homicidal thoughts for years.

‘I have a loving family and a good support system of people that want to see me thrive,’ Westman wrote. ‘For some reason, the fact that I have a pretty good life and the fact that I want kill people have never correlated to me.’

‘Every school I went to, I have some fantasy at some point or another of shooting up my school,’ Westman added. ‘Even every job.’

After graduating from Annunciation’s grade school in 2017, Westman attended at least two Minneapolis high schools, including an all-boys private military-style prep school, according to CNN.

In 2019, Westman’s mother filed to legally change the shooter’s name from Robert Paul Westman to Robin M. Westman, court documents show.

A judge who approved the petition in January 2020 wrote that Westman ‘identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.’

In journal entries, Westman appeared to voice regret about transitioning, writing: ‘I’m tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself.’

Officials have confirmed that Westman had no past criminal record and was not on any government watch lists.

The shooting is at least the fifth at K-12 schools in the US since the school year began on August 1, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun control advocates are once again calling for firearm restrictions to protect children in schools in the wake of the shooting.

​​According to data compiled by the Washington Post, there have been at least 434 school shootings since Columbine, meaning more than 397,000 students have experienced gun violence on school grounds.

Amy Over, a survivor of the Columbine massacre, told the author of this story in 2022 that Columbine should have been the last shooting of its kind – rather than an ignition point of sorts for the school shooting epidemic currently plaguing the US.

‘It made me physically ill and brought me to my knees,’ said Over, discussing a shooting at a school in Uvalde that claimed the lives of 19 children.

‘You can’t fathom that this could happen even once, but again it’s happening in a school and it’s young children being gunned down, like when is it going to stop?’

‘For some reason, Columbine wasn’t enough to bring around positive change. Sandy Hook wasn’t enough. Parkland wasn’t enough… When is enough going to be enough?’