Catholic School Shooter’s Uncle Is Ex-Lawmaker Who Fought Bans on Transgender Procedures for Kids
The article discusses the tragic school shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, carried out by Robin Westman, who identified as transgender. it highlights that Westman’s uncle, Robert Heleringer, a former Kentucky Republican lawmaker, has publicly opposed anti-LGBTQ legislation in kentucky. Heleringer criticized the GOP’s transgender-related bills as attacks on vulnerable individuals, including children, and previously worked with an LGBT advocacy group. Although he said he barely knew his nephew, the political and family connections have drawn national attention and sparked varied reactions on social media. Heleringer expressed sympathy and prayers for his sister, her family, and the victims of the shooting, emphasizing the tragedy’s gravity.
The murderous maniac who gunned down schoolchildren in Minnesota on Wednesday wasn’t the only one in the family who accepted “transgender” madness.
As word spread of the slaughter at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, the Associated Press reported that the killer’s uncle is a former Kentucky lawmaker who has been publicly vocal about bills in the Bluegrass State related to transgender issues.
Considering the carnage caused by transgender killer Robin Westman — two dead children and many more kids and adults wounded — those views are getting new, national attention.
“He was my nephew, and I wish he had shot me instead of innocent schoolchildren,” the uncle, Robert Heleringer, told the Associated Press.
The left created Robert/Robin Westman.
Guns didn’t create him.
Prayer didn’t create him.
The left and their INSANE gender ideology and hate-fueled rhetoric created this monster. pic.twitter.com/tWl9MwTAcw
— Kentucky Girl (@Notwokenow) August 27, 2025
Heleringer is a Republican who served in the Kentucky House from 1980 to 2003, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Two decades removed from his time in office, he took to the pages of the Courier Journal in 2023 to blast what he called a “tsunami of bills that attack, attack, attack people — including defenseless children — who happen to be homosexual or transgender, designations that are nobody’s public business.”
In a commentary piece headlined “I am a Kentucky Republican calling out my party’s war against LGBTQ people,” he noted that he worked as a lobbyist for Fairness Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group.
Heleringer’s piece didn’t specify which particular legislation he was talking about, but that was the year Kentucky Republican lawmakers managed to override a veto by Gov. Andy Beshear — an outspoken Democrat — to enact into law a package known as Senate Bill 150, the Herald-Leader reported at the time.
According to USA Today, the legislative package, among other things, banned “gender-affirming medical care” for young people confused about their sexuality.
For Heleringer, such measures were simply part of a “vendetta” against “transgender children.”
He wrote that the legislature was engaged in a “bruising campaign of intimidation against a small minority of Kentuckians, not because of ‘who’ the victims are but because of ‘what’ they are.”
The piece did not mention Heleringer had a “transgender” nephew, and it’s not definitively known at this point that Heleringer even knew that the boy born Robert Westman had been identifying as a woman named “Robin Westman.”
He told the Associated Press that he “barely” knew the gunman and that he hadn’t seen the family in three or four years. But considering that, as Newsweek reported, his sister actually signed the papers for her son to legally change his name in 2020, a full five years ago, it appears likely Heleringer was aware of the situation.
Regardless, news about the uncle’s stance — in direct opposition to the political party he claims membership in — set off a storm of comments on social media.
Here’s a sample:
Maybe he will see what his permissive and activist attitude has caused. You can’t see an apple fall off a table and then deny the gravity exists. That is the Democratic Party today. If you’re born a man, you’re a man if you’re born a woman you’re a woman it’s that simple.…
— Brian Sweeney (@BrianSweeney33) August 28, 2025
Redirect your anger from the mental illness to people like this uncle. They are enablers and withholders of the proper treatment for such condition.
— DDSS (@zxxzzzxxxx51383) August 28, 2025
Doesn’t surprise me his uncle would be pro-trans
— My moms caregiver (@mymomcare) August 28, 2025
He’s part of the problem not the solution
— Russell Milicia (@MiliciaRussell) August 28, 2025
Heleringer told the Associated Press that his family is praying for his sister, her family, and for victims of his nephew’s savage cruelty (a reaction that would get him jeered by the modern Democratic Party).
“It’s an unspeakable tragedy,” he said. “We’re praying for my sister and her other children and also, obviously, for these poor, poor children.”
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