10 Dead in Minn. Teen Rampage, Police Say
12 minutes ago
By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press Writer
BEMIDJI, Minn. - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on an 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 suspect apparently killed himself after exchanging gunfire
with police.
AFP
Slideshow: Eight Killed in Minn. High School Shooting
It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999
that killed 13 people.
One student said her classmates pleaded with the gunman to stop shooting.
"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are
you doing?" student 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.
In addition to the shooter, the death toll at the school included five
students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI (news - web sites) spokesman Paul
McCabe said 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 roads to
the reservation in far northern Minnesota while they investigated the
shootings.
Hegstrom described the shooter 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 gunman. 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 gunman 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.
Martha Thunder's 15-year-old son, Cody, was being treated for a gunshot wound
to the hip.
"He heard gunshots and the teacher said 'No, that's the janitor's doing
something,' and the next thing he knew, the kid walked in there and pointed the
gun right at him," Thunder said.
The school was evacuated after the shootings and locked down for the
investigation, McCabe said.
"It will probably take us throughout the night to really put the whole picture
together," he said.
Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe, called it "without
a doubt the darkest hour" in the group's history. "There has been a
considerable amount of lives lost, and we still don't know the total of that,"
Jourdain 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 rampage in Red Lake was the second fatal school shooting in Minnesota in 18
months. Two students were killed at Rocori High School in Cold Spring in
September 2003. Student John Jason McLaughlin, who was 15 at the time, awaits
trial in the case.
Red Lake High School, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation, 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 Indians.
___
Red Lake High School: http://www.paulbunyan.net/rlschools/hs.htm
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