GOP lawmakers want to know if Annunciation shooter was on antidepressants

Search warrant reveals more about Annunciation shooter

FOX 9 Investigator obtained a search warrant that details more about the Annunciation school shooter.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - A group of Minnesota Republican lawmakers are seeking autopsy and toxicology reports for the Annunciation shooter to examine the role psychotropic drugs may have played in the shooting – despite research that shows no link between the drugs and mass violence.

Annunciation shooter autopsy

What we know:

In a letter to the Minnesota BCA, the group of lawmakers from the House and Senate, led by Senator Steve Drazowski, are requesting the complete autopsy reports and toxicology findings for the person who opened fire on students at morning mass at Annunication Church last month.

After spraying bullets through a window, leaving two children dead and 21 others hurt on Aug. 27, police said the gunman then died from a self-inflicting gunshot wound in the church parking lot.

Dig deeper:

The lawmakers are also asking the BCA for an expanded toxicology report that will look for antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, cannabinoids, and psychoactive substances, along with any drugs related to gender transition therapies. FOX 9 has previously reported the gunman had filed to change their name in 2019, saying they now identified as a woman.

"Knowing the complete picture of what substances, legal and illegal, may have played a role in the perpetrator’s mental state would go a long way to understanding the factors that influenced the perpetrator’s motivations in committing this horrific act," the lawmakers write. "It would also inform the public debate on the use of these drugs, as we and other legislators struggle to understand the effects of these drugs on our society."

RFK Jr. questioned role of psychotropic drugs in mass shootings

The backstory:

The day after the shooting at Annunciation Church, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the department was looking into whether psychiatric drugs could be playing a role in mass shootings.

Back in February, as part of an executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission, the president directed the commission to look into any potential "threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs."

"We are going into that with an open mind," said Sec. Kennedy. "A lot of these studies have not been done in the past because of HIPAA regulations which protect the privacy of patients... We need to look at it, and we need to explain why all this violence is happening, and we need to look at every possibility."

Research shows no link between violence and psychotropic drugs

The backstory:

Psychotropic drugs have long been blamed as a cause of mass violence and school shootings, but research has failed to establish such a link.

A 2019 study that looked at school shootings between 2000 and 2017 found most school shooters had not been treated with psychotropic medications. Researchers with the Violence Project found that about 20 percent of mass shooters between 1996 and 2019 used psychotropic medications – which is about the rate for the public at large.

The other side:

In a piece for the Psychiatric Times, posted in response to Sec. Kennedy's concerns about psychotropic drugs, Drs. James Knoll IV and Ronald Pies highlighted a wide array of recent research that found no clear link between psychotropic drugs and mass violence.

"The preponderance of recent research does not point to a link between antidepressants and mass shootings; ie, there is little or no evidence showing that perpetrators of mass shootings are more likely than those in the general public to have used, or to have been prescribed, antidepressants prior to the shooting," the doctors write.

Instead, the doctors argue that it may be more productive to look at pre-attack behaviors, pointing to a study from the FBI that found shooters often displayed multiple signs of "concerning behavior" before attacks.

"In the light of these FBI findings, rather than repeatedly returning to the specious hypothesis that antidepressants are causing mass shootings, more ground may be gained through efforts to educate and encourage the public to report warning signs to law enforcement officials, as well as training law enforcement to investigate more effectively the concerning behaviors of potential perpetrators," the doctors write.