10 Dead in Minn. Teen Rampage, Police Say

7 minutes ago Top Stories - AP


By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press Writer

BEMIDJI, Minn. - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on this Indian reservation Monday, killing his grandparents at their home and then seven people at his school, "grinning and waving" as he fired, authorities and witnesses said. The gunman was later found shot to death.


Reuters Photo
Slideshow: Eight Killed in Minn. High School Shooting




It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999.


Students pleaded with the gunman to stop shooting.


"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?" Sondra Hegstrom told The Pioneer of Bemidji, using the name of the suspected shooter.


Before the shootings at Red Lake High School, the suspect's grandparents were shot in their home and died later. There was no immediate indication of the gunman's motive.


Six students including the gunman were killed at the school, along with a teacher and a security guard, FBI (news - web sites) spokesman Paul McCabe said at a news conference in Minneapolis.


Fourteen to 15 other students were injured, McCabe said. Some were being cared for in Bemidji, about 20 miles south of Red Lake. Authorities closed the reservation while they investigate the shootings.


Hegstrom described the gunman grinning and waving at a student his gun was pointed at, then swiveling to shoot someone else. "I looked him in the eye and ran in the room, and that's when I hid," she told The Pioneer.


McCabe declined to talk about a possible connection between the suspect and the couple killed at the home, but Red Lake Fire Director Roman Stately said they were the grandparents of the shooter. He identified the shooter's grandfather as Daryl Lussier, a longtime officer with the Red Lake Police Department, and said Lussier's guns may have been used in the shootings.


Stately said the shooter had two handguns and a shotgun.


"After he shot a security guard, he walked down the hallway shooting and went into a classroom where he shot a teacher and more students," Stately told Minneapolis television station KARE.


Students and a teacher, Diane Schwanz, said the shooter tried to break down a door to get into her classroom.


"I just got on the floor and called the cops," Schwanz told the Pioneer. "I was still just half-believing it."


Ashley Morrison, another student, had taken refuge in Schwanz's classroom. With the shooter banging on the door, she dialed her mother on her cell phone. Her mother, Wendy Morrison, said she could hear gunshots on the line.


"'Mom, he's trying to get in here and I'm scared,'" Ashley Morrison told her mother.


All of the dead students were found in one room. One of them was a boy believed to be the shooter, McCabe said. He would not comment on reports that the boy shot himself and said it was too early to speculate on a motive.


The school was evacuated after the shootings and locked down for investigation, McCabe said.





"It will probably take us throughout the night to really put the whole picture together," he said.

It was the nation's worst school shooting since two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 before killing themselves on April 20, 1999.

The last apparent fatal school shootings involving a student also happened in Minnesota in September 2003, when two students were killed at Rocori High School in Cold Spring. Classmate John Jason McLaughlin, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, awaits trial in the case.

That shooting was the first major incident reported since 2001.

Red Lake High School, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in far northern Minnesota, has about 300 students, according to its Web site.

The reservation is about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities. It is home to the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe, one of the poorest in the state. According to the 2000 census, 5,162 people lived on the reservation, and all but 91 were full-blooded Indians.


UPDATED
[Edited 3/21/05 19:26pm]

The number of dead came from our local news as this story on Yahoo is a little hazy. The news said that there were eight dead including the shooter and somewhere around 12 injured.

This is so sad. Nobody can tell me that video games and movies have no impact.

.
[Edited 3/21/05 16:24pm]

lovemachine said:

i'm sorry.

nobody can tell me that parents and school administration ignoring the behavior of its kids had no effect. it's so easy to blame the media for this kind of thing, when the heart of this kind of tragedy lies in simply PAYING ATTENTION TO THE DAMN KIDS.

awful.

Anxiety said:

I would agree with what you say but I need to add that in my opinion when the kid doesn't get the attention he needs he turns to guns and in my opinion this is at least partly because of popular culture (video games, movies, music, etc.).

This is so tragic. I have no idea as a country how in the world we are going to solve this problem.

lovemachine said:

maybe your last comment holds the answer. how is this kind of violence avoided in other countries, even though kids in those countries may have access to the same video games, movies, music, etc.?

Anxiety said:

Anxiety said:

Regardless of what Michael Moore might have said this problem exists everywhere (even Canada).

http://www.indystar.com/l...tings.html

But we should probably wait to turn this into a political discussion. There is plenty of time for that later. Now is a time for sorrow and grieving.

lovemachine said:

i'm not trying to even reference what michael moore said. or what jello biafra said before michael moore said it. and so on.

i grieved a long time ago. i grieved for columbine. i went to columbine high school in the winter of 1999, and paid my respects to some kids who were outside the school, holding a little impromptu vigil/memorial (i don't know what the proper term for it would be). it was really intense, moving, deep, real.

these incidents need to be treated as wake-up calls. reminders that the problems aren't solved. that the 'solution' of blaming certain scapegoats will not keep this from happening again. that responsibility must be taken if we love our children enough to keep them from killing each other.

this is not a time for sorrow. this is a time to ask why.

and i agree: let's drop the political BS. my point of view has nothing to do with michael moore. jello biafra was saying the same things years before moore, and i'm not even saying my POV has to do with what biafra said.

it has everything to do with how i was raised, what i experienced when i was in high school, and the damage i saw and experienced when i was that age. we were all there. some of us went through it with open eyes - some didn't.

times like these make us stop and think just how fragile life really is


my heart breaks for all the parents and students involved

also, i must say that the reactions posted here are kind of strange.. shouldnt this be a time of sadness ?? surely the rest of this can wait for another discussion, cant it

i'm sorry. i'll quit commenting in this thread. i don't even know these people's names. i only know the frustration of hearing this has happened again. and again. and again. and again.

i don't "do" hopelessness well.

i'll leave you to your mourning.

again: i'm sorry.

Tis very very sad. Aside from not paying enough attention and letting video games raise our kids, parents need to teach their kids the basic tenet of respect for others. I was shit on all through school and if I were a different sort of creature, I would have gladly blew the kids who bullied me to kingdom come.

lovemachine said:

It only has this kind of impact on too dumb to breathe simpletons...
Murder and death have always been...
Videogames, movies, books, music or whatever haven't got a thing to do with what happened there, if children are THAT retarded that they act out videogames or movies or whatever they read in some books then there's something wrong with them and/or their parents (lack of discipline or they're simply just too fucking stupid and imbecilic for words...) and the blame has to be put solely on them for their retardedness and lack of intelligence and logic...
I blame the (lack of a) system not entertainment that isn't even for kids...
If parents disregard the ratings for said entertainment then it's their own fault if their kid fucks up and grabs a gun that's practically too easy to come by in the US...
Ban guns and see if they'll settle for some hand to hand combat or knife fights (I personally doubt it, too much energy and hassle for them...) or just start to THINK for a minute (if possible...)
If that doesn't help then they're just a problem and a burden and need to be "taken care of" cos they're just a danger and nuisanse to people who DO use their brain...

Neversin.