MINNEAPOLIS — In the vaulted church of a Catholic school in Minneapolis, the pews were packed with teachers, parents and schoolchildren listening to a psalm on the third day of the new school year.

"For you darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day," a church member read to about 200 students Wednesday morning as sun streamed through stained glass windows.

Just before the congregants were to proclaim "Alleluia," bullets blasted through the windows.

"Down! Everybody down!" someone shouted as children ducked for cover behind wooden pews from a barrage of gunfire. One student threw himself on top of a friend and was shot in the back. A youth minister called her husband to say goodbye as bullets flew.

People used a wood plank to barricade a door and fled to a gymnasium. Sixt

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