Minn. Rampage Leaves 10 Dead

[Guest guest]

How long will it be before we find out what drugs this kid was on?

washingtonpost.com

Minn. Rampage Leaves 10 Dead

Dozens Are Shot on Reservation, Most At School; Suspect, Grandfather Die

By Lee and Shankar Vedantam

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, March 22, 2005; Page A01

Ten people were killed and more than a dozen were wounded yesterday by a

gunman who opened fire at a high school and a private home on an isolated

Indian reservation in northern Minnesota and engaged in a brief gunfight

with police before killing himself, the FBI said.

The gunman, who was a student, killed his grandfather and a woman at his

house, local officials said. They said he then traveled to the high school

in Red Lake, a town of a few thousand on the southern shore of an inland

lake, where witnesses said he charged into the school waving his gun and

grinning as he shot down students, teachers and a school security guard.

" At this time, we do believe the shooter acted alone, " FBI spokesman

McCabe said in a telephone interview last night. It was the nation's

deadliest school shooting since two students at Columbine High School in

Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people and wounded 23 others before killing

themselves on April 20, 1999.

The shooter entered Red Lake High School, which has about 300 students, in

the middle of the afternoon. The security guard, who was at the entrance,

was the first person shot, McCabe said.

Student Sondra Hegstrom described the gunman waving at a student while

pointing his gun and 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

newspaper of Bemidji, Minn., according to the Associated Press. " You could

hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you

doing?' "

All the dead at the school were found in the same room, McCabe said. They

included a school security guard, a female teacher and a number of students.

Fourteen to 15 other students were injured, but the extent of their injuries

was not known last night, and McCabe declined to comment on where the

injured were found.

" 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, " Red Lake

Fire Director Roman Stately told Minneapolis television station KARE.

Students and a teacher at the scene, Diane Schwanz, said the shooter tried

to break down a door to get into a room where some students were hiding. " I

just got on the floor and called the cops, " Schwanz told the Pioneer

newspaper. " I was still just half-believing it. I just got down on the floor

and [said], 'Kids, down on the ground, under the benches!' " She said she

called police on her cell phone.

on, another student, took refuge in a classroom. With the

shooter banging on the door, she dialed her mother on her cell phone, AP

reported. Her mother, on, said she could hear gunshots on the

line.

" Mom, he's trying to get in here and I'm scared, " on told her

mother.

" He randomly walked up and down the halls shooting, " said Eleanor Annette,

whose daughter Kathleen Annette is the head of the Indian health service in

Red Lake. " They are coming into the Bemidji hospital by the planeloads.

There is an Indian hospital, but they can't accommodate them. They are

taking them from the reservation to Bemidji and then to Fargo. "

Four tribal police officers arrived as the youth was shooting and exchanged

gunfire with him, McCabe said. The shooter retreated into a classroom, where

he was later found dead.

After the shooting, parents raced to the school to check on their children.

Authorities evacuated the school and locked down the campus as law

enforcement officers began an investigation that includes help from the Red

Lake tribal police, the Minnesota state police, the Beltrami County

Sheriff's Office and the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. An FBI

evidence-recovery team was sent to the scene. The FBI field office is in

Minneapolis, but five agents are regularly stationed in the Red Lake area

and are getting support from the field office, McCabe said.

" The investigation will be ongoing throughout the night, " he said.

Stately said the gunman killed his grandfather, whom the fire official

identified as Daryl Lussier, a longtime officer with the Red Lake Police

Department. He said that the shooter had two handguns and a shotgun and that

they may have been Lussier's guns, according to AP.

The killings yesterday were the second major school shooting in Minnesota in

recent years. In September 2003, two students were shot at Rocori High

School in Cold Spring in central Minnesota. McLaughlin, a student

who was 15 at the time of the shooting, awaits trial in the case.

Poverty on the Red Lake Reservation stood at 40 percent, the highest of any

reservation in Minnesota, according to the 2000 U.S. census, the Minneapolis

Star Tribune reported last year.

The reservation has seen violence before.

In January 2004, locals raked police buildings with gunfire, prompting a

crackdown by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and

Explosives. Three years ago, the Justice Department launched a major

crackdown on drugs and guns on the reservation, which has a population of

about 9,000 people. Officials found evidence of executions, drive-by

shootings and ritualistic violence.

Local residents blamed poverty, discrimination, and endless cycles of drug

and alcohol abuse. They said gangs often offered the only refuge for aimless

youngsters.

As early as 1979, FBI agents had to be sent into the reservation to

investigate widespread rioting and looting triggered by internal politics

and dissatisfaction with the management style of the BIA. Several dozen

Indians stormed the jails, locked up police officers and damaged property.

Red Lake is a closed reservation, meaning it is owned entirely by tribes, in

this case the Chippewa Indians.

The shooting left the town reeling.

" You just can't imagine it would happen, " said Karla Pankow, manager of a

local grocery store, the Trading Post. " There's a lot of hurt people and a

lot of devastated people because it's a small community and everybody knows

everybody. "