A little boy, just eight-years-old, who was killed in a deadly school shooting as he attended Mass has been named

Fletcher Merkel, aged 8 and a young girl aged 10, died after Robin Westman, 23, opened fire during a church mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, before turning the gun on himself. Seventeen people, including 14 children between the ages of 6 and 15, and three parishioners in their 80s, were injured in the attack. Westman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

Fletcher's dad, Jessie Merkel, blamed the "coward" killer in a statement to NBC News for being the reason the young boy's family can't "hold him, talk to him, play with him, and watch him grow into the wonderful young man he was on the path to becoming."

"Fletcher loved

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