‘She Lied To Us’: Annunciation 10-Year-Old Victim’s Parents Speak Out Against Demuth In New Ad

ST. PAUL, MN — The parents of a 10-year-old girl killed in last year's Annunciation shooting accuse Republican governor candidate Lisa Demuth of lying to them in a new TV ad from the Minnesota DFL.

In the ad, titled "Looked Us in the Eyes," Mike Moyski and Jackie Flavin say Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House, promised them during a meeting in their living room that she would allow a vote on gun legislation.

"We met with a lot of legislators in our living room. The one that stands out is when Speaker Demuth looked us in the eyes and promised that she would allow a vote on firearm safety," Moyski says in the ad.

"She lied to us. She blocked the vote. She totally went back on her word," Flavin says. "She didn't just break a promise to us, she broke a promise to all of these kids."

Harper Moyski and 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel were killed in the Aug. 27, 2025, shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. Dozens of others were wounded.

The ad was announced the same day Moyski and Flavin endorsed Democrat Amy Klobuchar for governor at a news conference in south Minneapolis. In announcing the ad, the DFL also claimed Demuth bragged about blocking the vote while she was campaigning for the Republican nomination.

The Minnesota Senate passed a comprehensive gun violence prevention package in May that included restrictions on assault-style weapons, but the bill never made it out of a House committee, KARE 11 reported.

Demuth has maintained that she never promised more than letting the bill move through the normal process. It died on party-line committee votes, and Democrats' repeated efforts to bring it straight to the floor deadlocked in the evenly split chamber.

During Wednesday night's televised debate with Klobuchar, Demuth rejected the parents' account of the meeting, saying she only promised the bills would go through the legislative process, according to the Star Tribune.

In a statement reported by MPR News, Demuth's side said there were seven votes on the issues during the session and that she "supported elements of the Annunciation parents' agenda, including mobile crisis grants and required anonymous threat reporting systems in all schools."

Election Day is Nov. 3.