A former Republican lawmaker has been connected to the deranged transgender shooter who opened fire on a Catholic school Mass on Wednesday morning. Now, the family member is speaking out.

Two children were killed and 17 more were injured after 23-year-old Robin Westman fired through a window into Assumption Church in Minneapolis, where morning services had just begun. Children who survived the ordeal told chilling tales about playing dead beneath the bodies of classmates as they hid from the gunman.

Already, media reports have indicated that Westman’s mother worked at the Catholic K-8 school served by the church. New, however, is a family connection to Bob Heleringer, a former lawmaker from Kentucky, who wished about his nephew’s actions that “he had shot me instead of innocent schoolchildren.”

No official motive has been provided for Westman’s actions, but a time-released online video appeared to show Westman touting firearms carrying anti-Trump and anti-religious messages on their magazines. FBI Director Kash Patel said the administration will be investigating the shooting as an “act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said that Westman was dressed in all black and carried a pistol, shotgun, and rifle as he stalked the pews in search of children as young as 6 years old. He called the shooting “a deliberate act of violence.”

Heleringer told the AP that the shooting is an “unspeakable tragedy” and said he is “praying for my sister and her other children, and also, obviously, for these poor, poor children.”

“I wish he had shot me instead of innocent schoolchildren,” he told the outlet.

The Republican former lawmaker insisted he did not know his nephew well and last saw him at a family wedding three or four years ago, the Daily Mail reported.

While in office, Heleringer supported measures to ban Kentucky minors from receiving gender reassignment care, including surgeries and chemical treatments. One ad asked if Republicans worked so hard to win legislative victories “just to wage an all-out war against defenseless transgender children?”

Other Republican lawmakers who spoke out about policy changes in wake of the shooting pointed to mental health illnesses suffered by some transgender individuals, such as the Nashville church shooter from 2024.

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) also criticized Minnesota’s law banning guns from public school grounds.

“Deranged shooters choose schools because they know their victims are vulnerable. This one even admitted it,” he wrote on social media Wednesday.

“There’s never been a shooting like this in a school that allows staff to carry,” Massie alleged.