from ajc.com
10 **** in Minn. Teen Rampage, Police Say
By JOSHUA FREED
Associated Press Writer
BEMIDJI, Minn. — A high school student went on a **** 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 **** himself after exchanging gunfire with police.
It was the nation's worst **** since the Columbine massacre in 1999.
One student said her classmates pleaded with the **** to stop ****.
"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 ****.
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 ****'s motive.
In addition to the ****, the death toll at the school included five students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI 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 **** 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 **** at the home, but Red Lake Fire Director Roman Stately said they were the grandparents of the ****. He identified the ****'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 **** had two handguns and a shotgun.
"After he shot a security guard, he walked down the hallway **** 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 **** 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 **** 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 **** students were found in one room. One of them was a boy believed to be the ****, 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.
It was the nation's worst **** since two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., **** 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 before killing themselves on April 20, 1999.
The rampage in Red Lake was the second fatal **** in Minnesota in 18 months. Two students were **** 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.
How sad??? Kids these days are crazy...they say his father committed **** and his mother is locked up......I guess he felt he had nothing to live for and wanted to inflict pain on others just as it was inflicted on him....so sad.....
Well, I'm ****! (damn, it just makes me angry thinking about the sh!t)
I feel just terrible for them. Yeah, people get angry at times (hell, I can be a walking time **** myself at times), but in the end nothing is accomplished by taking someone else's life, especially not from mental suffering.
this is really sad. i woke up to this news. and just when I thought this whole gun **** in school thing cooled down a bit. i just pray that this dont start up another epidemic. remeber back when this happened at columbine? everybody started to come to **** up people....
