March 22, 2005
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Police and firefighters secured the scene around Red Lake High School after a shooting spree Monday.
Details Emerge About School Shooting in Minnesota
By MONICA DAVEY
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
ED LAKE, Minn., March 22 -Sixteen-year old Jeff Weise wore a bulletproof vest and a police holster when he opened fire on students taking cover in a classroom and gunned down others who were fleeing in corridors during a 10-minute shooting spree at an Indian reservation school on Monday, the authorities said today.
The shooting rampage came to an end when Mr. Weise shot and killed himself after killing nine people and wounding seven. Bullet casings littered the halls and classrooms of the school at the Red Lake Indian Reservation, an F.B.I. official, Michael Tabman, said. Mr. Tabman said the authorities believe Mr. Weise acted alone but they are investigating Internet postings on a neo-Nazi Web site left by a person who identified himself as Jeff Weise and said he lived on the reservation.
“I guess I’ve always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations,” said the Internet posting,on which the writer also called himself “Todesengel,” Angel of Death in German.
The killings shocked the close-knit community on the reservation, which is about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities and about 120 miles south of Canada and ishome to about 5,000 Ojibwa Indians, commonly called Chippewa.
“Not a soul will go untouched by this tragic series of events,” said the chairman of the Red Lake tribe, Floyd Jourdain, Jr., speaking to reporters before the news conference. “It’s devastating because so many people know each other and the families.”
Mr. Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion, five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard, the authorities said.
“We understand the enormity of this tragedy,” Mr. Tabman said.
The killing spree, according to the F.B.I. account, started when Mr. Weise, armed with a .22-caliber handgun, went to his grandfather’s house off a wooded road, a mile or two from the high school. There, he shot dead his grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 58, a sergeant in the tribal police, and killed his companion, Michelle Sigana, 32.
He then took Mr. Lussier’s bulletproof vest, police utility belt, marked squad car and two weapons, one a 12-gauge shotgun and the other a .40-caliber handgun. It was not clear where he obtained the .22-caliber weapon.
Mr. Weise drove the car to the school, parked, walked inside with the weapons and immediately shot and killed the unarmed security guard, Derrick Brun, 28, who was standing near a metal detector.
Inside the school, Mr. Weise saw a cluster of students and a teacher, according to the accounts. Wearing the bulletproof vest and belt, he chased the group into a classroom. Most of the dead were shot there. He then emerged, randomly firing at fleeing students.
According to Mr. Tabman’s account, the police arrived and Mr. Weise fired on them, and one officer returned fire but it was unclear whether he was hit. Mr. Weise then ran back into the classroom and turned the gun on himself.
Video cameras at the school did not have a record of the incident.
Officials said that the barrage erupted at the 300-student Red Lake High School about 3 p.m.
Officials at North Country Regional Hospital in Bemidji, Minn., released figures today of seven wounded. Six of them have been identified. The hospital admitted three, while two were airlifted to a hospital in Fargo, N.D., for neurosurgery. The sixth was pronounced dead in the emergency room.
Officials at the hospital said today they had prepared to receive a “deluge” of patients after being notified at about 3:15 p.m. of the shooting. They notified emergency teams and asked staff members to stay past their shifts.
Just over an hour later, victims with gunshot wounds to the head, face and chest arrived, the officials said at a news conference.
“Our first notification was that there was a shooting at the school in Red Lake and that there were multiple victims, and that’s as detailed as we received,” said Joe Corser, a doctor.
“We’ve never dealt with anything like this before,” said Sheri Birkeland, a hospital press officer.
The shooting was the worst at a school since 15 people were killed at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, and came just 18 months after two students were fatally shot at Rocori High School in the central Minnesota town of Cold Spring, 200 miles away.
Roman Stately, director of the Red Lake Fire Department, told The A.P. and local television stations on Monday that the police found the two bodies in the grandfather’s home an hour after the school shooting.Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota said in a news conference broadcast on television today that there would be a day of remembrance for the victims.
Witnesses told The Pioneer, a newspaper in Bemidji, the nearest town, an hour’s drive away, that the gunman was “grinning and waving” as he fired his weapon and that students pleaded with him to stop, according to The A.P.
“You could hear a girl saying, ‘No, Jeff, quit, quit, leave me alone, what are you doing?’ ” The A.P. quoted Sondra Hegstrom, a student, as telling The Pioneer. “I looked him in the eye and ran in the room, and that’s when I hid.”
A teacher, Diane Schwanz, told The Pioneer that she herded students under benches as she dialed 911 on her cellphone.
“I just got on the floor and called the cops,” she said.
The tribe operates three casinos and other tourist attractions on some half-million acres.
Clyde Bellecourt, founder of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement, said he could not “remember anything as tragic as this happening” on a reservation.
“Everyone in the Indian community is feeling really bad right now, whether they’re a member of the Red Lake or not, we’re all an extended family, we’re all related,” he said. “Usually this happens in places like Columbine, white schools, always somewhere else. We never hear that in our community.”
Mr. Bellecourt and his brother Vernon, another longtime American Indian leader, said that the gunman’s grandfather had been on the local police force for perhaps 35 years, and belonged to one of the tribe’s most prominent and respected families.
Monica Davey reported from Red Lake, Minn., for this article and Christine Hauser from New York. Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting from Chicago; Mikkel Patesfrom Fargo, Kermit Pattison from Minneapolis and Gretchen Reuthling from Chicago.
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