Posts on X are claiming a Black man named Clifford Phillips was the heavily armed shooter who fired through the windows on children attending a church service in Minneapolis, Minnesota, killing two students and wounding 18 more people. This is false; authorities identified the attacker, who died by suicide during the August 27, 2025 attack, as Robin Westman, 23.
"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.'"
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.
Phillips 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).
On YouTube, where commenters on his most recent video accused him of being the shooter, he added (archived here): "Wow you idiots don't know when to stop."
AFP contacted Phillips via multiple social media accounts for additional comment, but no response was immediately forthcoming.
AFP has debunked past hoaxes misidentifying other shooters here.
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