What a terrible story....

[Stonecold54]

BEMIDJI, Minn. (AP) - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on this 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 gunman was later found shot to death. It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999.

Students pleaded with the gunman to stop shooting.

"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?" 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.


Six students including the gunman were killed at the school, along with a teacher and a security guard, FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said at a news conference 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 investigate the shootings.

Hegstrom described the gunman 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 shooter. 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 shooter 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 shooter fired twice. The first bullet struck a clock on the wall behind Cody, who ducked. The second bullet hit him in the hip, she 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 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 full-blooded Indians.

[imonboardtoo]

Yea. Just read it myself. Makes you wonder why kids think that shooting up their schools and killing others is gonna solve their problems.

[lookin 4 juice]

I attended columbine....Before the shootings.

It shocked my family and me especially when it happened.
It must of been terrible for the victims familes.

[meat12]

Damn, that's terrible. What's this world come to... makes me sick

[Pumpdogg]

Kids just don't have any direction anymore IMO. Parents if that is what you want to call them, let their children do what they want when they want, there are no consequences for their actions etc etc.. I could go on and on about it, but it boils down to the parents. Your children are a direct reflection of what you teach them, ( i know there are some exceptions) and parents have quit teaching their kids much of anything now days. Just my opinion

PD

[bad14u]

WTF? Shit like this never happened when I was in school, but then again back then you could still paddle a fuckin' kid and your parents could whoop your ass if you misbehaved. Society in whole is the reason shit like this happens. Give kids a 1-800 number to call for receiving a spanking and no serious punishments in school other than expulsion. IMHO.

[Scrumhalf]

There is something wrong with American society and I hope we can figure out what it is that is causing these things to happen.

And it isn't the availability of guns - there are many other countries with guns more readily available and I have never heard of school shootings elsewhere.

[blm]

Originally posted by Scrumhalf
And it isn't the availability of guns - there are many other countries with guns more readily available and I have never heard of school shootings elsewhere.

Damn right it's not. When I was in school (mind you I'm only 29) famlies had avid hunters in it and the guns were rarely locked up and separated from the ammo. And there wasn't one incident like this. But if you got in trouble at school or at home you surely got your ass beat by the prinicple and mom and/or dad. Parents seem to be taking a less active role in parenting these days. They get too wrapped up in the hussle and bussle of trying to get rich and let there family values slide to the side.

[Scrumhalf]

Take for example South Africa. The country is awash with guns and other weapons - lots of violent crime but never a case of school shootings or random hostage taking, mall shootouts, etc. that seem to be a weekly event in the US.

There is something going on here - I don't know if it is poor parenting, too much violence on TV and its presentation in an antiseptic manner where the protagonists never get hurt, or what but as a society we need to examine this and make some sense of it.

[bad14u]

Here's another link with more info.......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...443324,00.html

[JUICE]

whats wrong with these fricken little kids nowadays. Damn, more and more psychotic people being born, like timebombs, they grow up and snap. This world has gone to shiattttt.

What Ive noticed here where i live, more and more youngsters own illegal guns. Most of my friends own on legally or illegally. A gun gives them power, thinking they can own the world. Just sucks when people snap and go on rampages.

[BENCH355ANIMAL]

There is something in the water!!!


Seriously though........we're too laxed of a society when it comes to punishment of juveniles or criminals of any age for that matter. The CEO's of corporate companies get 85 years in jail yet there are multiple rapists and some murderers living in our cities as we speak., because they only got 10-20. WTF!!! We have thousands of inmates on deathrow right now wasting away our tax money, because we're to sensitive. FRY THEIR ASSES, build more after school centers for children AND parents, and..................................















LEGALIZE STEROIDS

[JUICE]

here another story on it too.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7259823/

[CiViC SpiKeS]

Damn dude went ape shit... i bet he just killed everyone that pissed him off... his grandparents though