Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - 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. .

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. . Authorities didn't identify the gunman, but a few media outlets identified him as Jeff Weise, citing students and tribal leaders. . Accounts of Weise's age varied from 15 to 17, as did whether he was a current student at the school. . Relatives told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Weise was a loner who usually wore black and was teased by other kids. Relatives told the newspaper his father committed suicide four years ago, and that his mother was living in a Minneapolis nursing home because she suffered brain injuries in a car accident. . In addition to the shooter, the death toll at the school included five students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said in Minneapolis. Among the dead was Neva Rogers, 62, a teacher at the school for five or six years, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. .

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, according to the newspaper. .

All of the dead students were found in one room. One of them was a boy believed to be the shooter, McCabe said. He 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, standing outside the hospital in Bemidji. .

Police officers were posted at the hospital Monday night to discourage reporters from entering. When a reporter approached three men walking across a hospital parking lot, one broke down in tears, and the others said they had no comment. .

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. - Int. Herald Tribune

- Jeff Weise [posting on a libertarian National Socialist website - Mar 19th, 2004]

School gunman stole police pistol, vest

Chase Lussier, 15, died at Red Lake High School on Monday afternoon as Weise, his second cousin, fired shots from two pistols and a shotgun at classmates and a teacher.

It had been thought that Weise's grandfather, Daryl 'Dash' Lussier, a tribal policeman, was the only member of the killer's family to die in the attacks. Daryl Lussier was the first to die on Monday morning after Weise arrived at his house armed with a handgun. After shooting his grandfather and Michelle Sigana, 32, his grandfather's companion, Weise stole a police-issue bulletproof vest, another handgun and a shotgun. He also took his grandfather's police car and drove it to the high school, where he killed Chase Lussier and six others before turning the gun on himself.

The Lussiers are one of the biggest and most influential families in Red Lake. The branch of the family most closely connected to the Weises has a troubled history. Daryl Lussier Jr, Weise's father, committed suicide in 1997 after a day-long stand-off with tribal police.

His own father, Daryl Sr, was one of the tribal officers who tried to talk him out of killing himself. Jeff Weise was deeply traumatised by his father's suicide and other family members in Red Lake believe that he bore a grudge against his grandfather's side of the family and the tribal police for failing to prevent the death. - school-killer-shot-cousin-in-spree

During the press conference, Red Lake Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. warned media members that they were guests on Indian land and that Red Lake is a closed reservation. He said he would protect the privacy of the grieving community, as well as the integrity of the ongoing FBI investigation, by ordering the expulsion of any media members who strayed from the assigned parking lot. A short time later, tribal officials brought in portable toilets for the convenience of the media members and to prevent any excuses they might have for wandering around the reservation. "Out of respect for the victims and their families, we request you won't go out in the community," Jourdain said

Symptoms of something more sinister?

A culture of pride twisted by the politically powerful into one of racial purity ?

30th March, 2005 (UPI) - Investigators followed a computer message trail to the son of the Red Lake Chippewa tribal chairman in the last week's Minnesota school shootings, reports said.

Sources close to the investigation of Jeff Weise's March 21 shooting spree on the Red Lake Indian Reservation told the Minneapolis Star Tribune Weise planned the rampage with Louis Jourdain more than a year ago.

Jourdain, 16, was arrested Sunday, six days after Weise killed nine people before taking his own life. He was held in Duluth on charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

An alleged plot to get weapons and kill people at the senior high school was found in e-mail and instant messages, a source said.

Another source said Jourdain indicated he would be angry if Weise began an assault without him. At least three other reservation teens who exchanged messages with Weise have been questioned and the possibility of a conspiracy numbed the reservation.

Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. said his son was incapable of such a violent act. - Big News Network.com

Pills made him snap, says soldier

The drug's manufacturer warned of rare but severe side effects including paranoia and hallucinations. It became his defense: The pills made him snap. The Army dropped all charges, a spokesman later saying that [the soldier] Pogany "may have a medical problem that requires care and treatment."

Pogany is among the current or former troops sent to Iraq who claim that Lariam, the commercial name for the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, provoked disturbing and dangerous behavior. The families of some troops blame the drug for the suicides of their loved ones. Though the evidence is largely anecdotal, their stories have raised alarm in Congress, and the Pentagon has stopped giving out a pill it probably never needed to give to tens of thousands of troops in Iraq in the first place.

"What are we doing giving drugs that cause hallucinations, confusion, psychotic behavior to people that carry weapons and hold secret clearances?" asked Pogany, 33, who is now seeking a medical discharge. "It doesn't pass the common-sense test." - msnbc

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