Another high school shooting

[Shelly]

Officials: Student kills 5 at school and grandparents
Shooter also believed dead at Minnesota high school


(CNN) -- A student on Monday killed two of his grandparents, then went on a shooting rampage at his Minnesota high school, killing five people and wounding as many as 15 others before killing himself, officials said.

FBI Special Agent Paul McCabe told reporters the dead include a female teacher, a male security officer and four Red Lake High School students.

"We believe that one of those students is the shooter," McCabe said.

The school was evacuated and locked down, he said.

"At this time, we believe he was acting alone," McCabe said. He would not comment on a possible motive, saying, "It's far too early in the investigation."

The slain students were shot in one room, he said, adding that 14 to 15 other students were wounded.

"Apparently, he walked down the hallway shooting and then he entered a classroom, he shot several students and a teacher, then himself,"said Roman Stately, with the Red Lake Fire Department, who arrived at the high school moments after the shootings.

Authorities discovered about an hour later that the boy had shot and killed his grandmother and grandfather, a veteran of the police force, Stately told KARE-TV.

Stately said the boy used his grandfather's police-issued weapon in the school rampage.

The shootings occurred about 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET), in Red Lake High School, a school of 300 student that is on a sovereign Indian reservation within Beltrami County, about 25 miles north of Bemidji, a town of about 25,000 residents, many of them Ojibway Indians, he said.

The school is about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities, near the Canadian border.



Find this article at: here (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/21/school.shooting/)

[Smackie Chan]

Thank you for the link.

[Spurgal]

What Is this world coming to? :depressed

[atlfan25]

it's always been this way.

[Clandestino]

pilots have been lobbying to carry guns to work..teachers are next in line!

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

it's always been this way.


Define "always"

[alamo50]

Other students said he was picked on and that he'd made threats

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050222/050322_minn_hmed_6a.h2.jpg
Jim Mone / AP
Reggie Graves, a student at Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minn., recalls the gunfire at the high school during an interview Tuesday at his home in Redby, Minn.

NBC, MSNBC and news services
Updated: 11:27 a.m. ET March 22, 2005


BEMIDJI, Minn. - A troubling profile of the teenager who shot dead nine people, seven at his high school, emerged on Tuesday — one of a Native American who described himself as a "NativeNazi" and who other students said was regularly picked on for his odd behavior.

The teenager, identified as 17-year-old Jeff Weise, stormed into Red Lake High School on Monday afternoon, shooting dead a guard, a teacher and five students before apparently killing himself. At least 14 other students and teachers were wounded in the nation’s worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999 that killed 13 people.

Weise had been placed in the school’s Homebound program for some violation of policy, said school board member Kathryn Beaulieu. Students in that program stay at home and are tutored by a traveling teacher. Beaulieu said she didn’t know what Weise’s violation was, and wouldn’t be allowed to reveal it if she did.

Before the school shootings, Weise shot dead his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend at the home he shared with them.

Student Sondra Hegstrom, 17, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that Weise was into goth culture, wore "a big old black trench coat," drew pictures of skeletons, listened to heavy metal music and "talked about death all the time."

A couple of his friends had said he was suicidal, she added, and they said they were watching a movie once when he said, "That would be cool if I shot up the school."

"They didn't think anything of it," Hegstrom said, but "he got terrorized a lot" by others who called him names.

Relatives of Weise told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Weise's father committed suicide four years ago, and his mother lives in a Minneapolis nursing home because she suffered brain injuries in a car accident, the relatives said.

Online postings about 'racial purity'
Weise was also found by the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper to have posted several comments last year on an online forum frequented by neo-Nazis. He used the pen names Todesengel, German for "angel of death," and "NativeNazi."

"I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations," Weise wrote in one session.

He shared the Nazi goal of racial purity, saying that when he talked in school about that for his own Chippewa tribe, "I get the same old argument which seems to be so common around here. 'We need to mix all the races, to combine all the strengths.'"

"They (teachers) don't openly say that racial purity is wrong," he added, "yet when you speak your mind on the subject you get 'silenced' real quick by the teachers and likeminded school officials."

"When I was growing up, I was taught (like others) that Nazi's were evil and that Hitler was a very evil man," he said in another posting. "Of course, not for a second did I believe this. ... They truly were doing it for the better."

He also wrote that he planned to recruit high school students to join a neo-Nazi movement he hoped to start on his reservation.

"The only ones who oppose my views are the teachers at the high school, and a large portion of the student body who think a Nazi is a Klansman, or a White Supremacist thug," he wrote. "Most of the Natives I know have been poisoned by what they were taught in school."

Students describe ordeal
The school, which is on the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe reservation, has metal detectors but Weise reportedly shot an unarmed guard to get past the station.

Student Reggie Graves said he was watching a movie about Shakespeare in class Monday when he heard Weise blast his way past the metal detector.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/NEWS/050321/Red_Lake_MN.gif

Then, in a nearby classroom, he heard Weise say something to his friend Ryan: “He asked Ryan if he believed in God,” Graves said. “And then he shot him.”

During the rampage, teachers herded students from one room to another, trying to move away from the sound of the shooting, said Graves, 14. He said some students crouched under desks.

Student Ashley Morrison said she heard shots, then saw the gunman’s face peering though a door window of a classroom where she was hiding with other students.

With Weise banging on the door, she dialed her mother on her cell phone. “’Mom, he’s trying to get in here and I’m scared,”’ Morrison told her mother.

After banging, the shooter walked away and she heard more shots.

“I can’t even count how many gunshots you heard, there was over 20 ... there were people screaming, and they made us get behind the desk,” she said.

Hegstrom said her classmates pleaded with Weise to stop shooting.

“You could hear a girl saying, ’No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?” she told The Pioneer of Bemidji.

Hegstrom described Weise 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 said.

Grandfather's guns used?
Red Lake Fire Director Roman Stately 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 Weise had two handguns and a shotgun. The teen reportedly drove up to the school in his grandfather's squad car.

“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.”

All of the dead students were found in one room.

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.

‘Darkest hour' for tribe
Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe, called it “without a doubt the darkest hour” in the group’s history.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050321/050321_minnesota_vmed_10p.standard.jpg
Molly Miron / BEMIDJI PIONEER
Students, from left, Sondra Hegstrom, Marla Hegstrom and Ashley Morrison were among the survivors of Monday's school shooting.

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.

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.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

[ALVAREZ6]

Stupid mother fucker, did he have to kill all those people and his grandparents?

Why couldn't he just shoot himself.

[MannyIsGod]

Why the highlighting about the goth and heavy metal thing?

Why does this type of thing induce inquiries to the type of music listned to?

I think far more pertinent is the discussion, or lack there of, of how cruel children in high school can be. It can, and has, caused people like this to just snap.

It's just so fucked up all around, but it's another symptom of living in the worlds most violent culture.

A question to the Europeans who post here; how often does this occour in Europe?

[Slomo]

From the top of my head I can't remember any similar incidents. It's also true that guns are much harder to get by over here so it might have something to do with it. Although I do not think it's the only explanation.

In any case these are very sad and scary occurences (specially for parents).

[ALVAREZ6]

It's just so fucked up all around, but it's another symptom of living in the worlds most violent culture.

A question to the Europeans who post here; how often does this occour in Europe?
Maybe not this kind of stuff happens in Europe, but all around the world, bad things happen in different ways, it doesn't need to involve school shootings.

In Buenos Aires, sports are very serious, especially in soccer, things can get rough in the stands. If you thought the Detroit vs. Indy brawl was anything, then that's nothing compared to what happens in other countries. When my dad was younger, he told me about going to soccer games in Buenos Aires where fans of 2 rival teams would bring all shorts of weapons to start fights. People bring knifes, guns, etc, and get killed over sports games.

[MannyIsGod]

I'm familliar with soccer and other sports brawls, but that doesn't equate the level of violence we have here in America.

We are by far the most violent society in the world, and people don't want to stop and wonder why.

[ALVAREZ6]

I'm familliar with soccer and other sports brawls, but that doesn't equate the level of violence we have here in America.

We are by far the most violent society in the world, and people don't want to stop and wonder why.
I think because...
1. The Population- lot's of "gangsters" that think killing is cool
2. People have access to more things like guns and all this other stuff. Parents aren't as strick here. More kids do drugs here than anywhere else in the world.

[baseline bum]

It happens here because America is fucked up. It's not about easy access to weapons or rock music or anything like that. I think as Americans we're arrogant as hell and we think we always have the right - even the obligation - to put someone in his place if he crosses us. Guns are available in lots of other places and this kind of crap doesn't happen. Drugs are used all over the world and you don't see this. Kids get picked on all over the other continents too. As Americans we need to look in the mirror and quit searching for easy answers and scapegoats. It's in our culture to make examples of our enemies instead of doing what makes the most sense logically.

[ALVAREZ6]

Drugs are used all over the world and you don't see this.

Drugs are used by kids here more than anywhere in the world.

Half of my school does weed.

You can't find another country that has kids doing the crap they do here.

[Dex]

No, the kids in other countries just shoot at our soldiers instead.

You're fooling yourself if you think America is the only place with problems.

[MannyIsGod]

No one said it's the only place with problems, but it's undeniably the most violent culture on earth.

[ALVAREZ6]

No, the kids in other countries just shoot at our soldiers instead.

You're fooling yourself if you think America is the only place with problems.
Read my other posts I never said that moron.

I said that more kids do drugs here.

[baseline bum]

Drugs are used by kids here more than anywhere in the world.

Half of my school does weed.



Some of my friends are from places as varied as Vietnam, Peru, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Holland, Brazil, Germany, France, the UK etc. and inform me this just isn't so.

[Dex]

Read my other posts I never said that moron.

I said that more kids do drugs here.

I'm not denying that point, even if I don't quite believe it. It's just part of the capitalist society that has become so American. More kids buy fast food and candy here, too. The availablity is a large part of the problem.

However, nothing in the reports of this shooting indicate drug use or abuse, and it's apparently already been stated that bad occurences such as this are not simply isolated strictly to American soil, so I still don't see why the potheads at your school have anything to do with this?

And furthermore, watch the mouth and accept the fact that people disagree at times.

[MannyIsGod]

Dex is under 18 (I think) and smarter than most people in here. Nice.

[Clandestino]

Germany: April 2002

Eighteen people died when an expelled former pupil went on a shooting spree at his school in the eastern German city of Erfurt.


Scotland:

Scotland, March 1996: Gun enthusiast Thomas Hamilton shoots 16 children and their teacher dead at their primary school in Dunblane, Scotland before killing himself.

[Dex]

19, but close enough. I'm still a youngin' in most regards. :king

Thanks anyways.

[Clandestino]

Some of my friends are from places as varied as Vietnam, Peru, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Holland, Brazil, Germany, France, the UK etc. and inform me this just isn't so.

yeah, i would say drug use is more rampant overseas. especially in europe bc of the light penalties.

[Clandestino]

Gun Control Misfires in Europe
Wall Street Journal Europe
April 30, 2002

By John R. Lott, Jr.

European gun laws have everything American gun control proponents advocate. Yet, the three very worst public shootings in the last year all occurred in Europe. Indeed around the world, from Australia to England, countries that have recently strengthened gun control laws with the promise of lowering crime have instead seen violent crime soar.

Sixteen people were killed during last Friday¹s public school shooting in Germany. Compare that to the United States with almost five times as many students, where 32 students and four teachers were killed from any type of gun death at elementary and secondary schools from August 1997 through February 2002, almost five school years. This total includes not only much publicized public school shootings but also gang fights, robberies, accidents. It all corresponds to an annual rate of one student death per five million students and one teacher death per 4.13 million teachers.

In Europe shootings have not been limited to schools, of course. The other two worst public shootings were the killing of 14 regional legislators in Zug, a Swiss canton, last September and the massacre of eight city council members in a Paris suburb last month.

So one must automatically assume that European gun laws are easy. Wrong. Germans who wish to get hold of a hunting rifle must undergo checks that can last a year, while those wanting a gun for sport must be a member of a club and obtain a license from the police. The French must apply for gun permits, which are granted only after an exhaustive background and medical record check and demonstrated need. After all that, permits are only valid for three years.

Even Switzerland¹s once famously liberal laws have become tighter. In 1999 Switzerland¹s federation ended policies in half the cantons where concealed handguns were unregulated and allowed to be carried anywhere. Even in many cantons where regulations had previously existed, they had been only relatively liberal. Swiss federal law now severely limits permits only to those who can demonstrate in advance a need for a weapon to protect themselves or others against a precisely specified danger.

All three killing sprees shared one thing in common: they took place in so-called gun-free ³safe zones.² The attraction of gun-free zone is hardly surprising as guns surely make it easier to kill people, but guns also make it much easier for people to defend themselves. Yet, with ³gun-free zones,² as with many other gun laws, it is law-abiding citizens, not would-be criminals, who obey them. Hence, these laws risk leaving potential victims defenseless.

After a long flirtation with ³safe zones,² many Americans have learned their lesson the hard way. The U.S. has seen a major change from 1985 when just eight states had the most liberal right-to-carry laws--laws that automatically grant permits once applicants pass a criminal background check, pay their fees, and, when required, complete a training class. Today the total is 33 states. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings, like the three in Europe, fell on average by 78% in states that passed such laws.

The lesson extends more broadly. Violent crime is becoming a major problem in Europe. While many factors, such as law enforcement, drug gangs, and immigration, affect crime, the lofty promises of gun controllers can no longer be taken seriously.

In 1996, the U.K. banned handguns. Prior to that time, over 54,000 Britons owned such weapons. The ban is so tight that even shooters training for the Olympics were forced to travel to other countries to practice. In the four years since the ban, gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40%. Dave Rogers, vice chairman of London¹s Metropolitan Police Federation, said that the ban made little difference to the number of guns in the hands of criminals. . . . ³The underground supply of guns does not seem to have dried up at all.²

The United Kingdom now leads the United States by a wide margin in robberies and aggravated assaults. Although murder and rape rates are still higher in the United States, the difference is shrinking quickly.

Australia also passed severe gun restrictions in 1996, banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively. In the subsequent four years, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24%, and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.

Both the U.K. and Australia have been thought to be ideal places for gun control as they are surrounded by water, making gun smuggling relatively difficult. Of course, advocates of gun control look for ways to get around any evidence. Publications such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times blame Europe¹s increasing crime problems on a seemingly unstoppable black market that ³has undercut . . . strict gun-control laws.² Let¹s say that¹s the case--even then, these gun laws clearly did not deliver the promised reductions in crime.

It is hard to think of a much more draconian police state than the former Soviet Union, yet despite a ban on guns that dates back to the communist revolution, newly released data suggest that the ³worker¹s paradise² was less than the idyllic picture painted by the regime in yet another respect: murder rates were high. During the entire decade from 1976 to 1985 the Soviet Union¹s homicide rate was between 21% and 41% higher than that of the United States. By 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had risen to 48% above U.S. rate.

In fact, the countries with by far the highest homicide rates have gun bans.

[timvp]

Native American school shooting?

This will get like 1/10000000th the amount of coverage as that Columbine shooting.

[MannyIsGod]

I think gun control is a bad idea. At least the way it's enacted in this country. But I think people in this society needs to take personal responsibility for it's violent tendencies and try to figure out their root.

[MannyIsGod]

And yeah LJ, I agree 100% with that.

[NameDropper]

Dex is under 18 (I think) and smarter than most people in here. Nice.

Age has nothing to do with one's intelligence and to say one is smarter than someone else is whack.

[E20]

What a
F-a-g

[Guru of Nothing]

I think gun control is a bad idea. At least the way it's enacted in this country. But I think people in this society needs to take personal responsibility for it's violent tendencies and try to figure out their root.

You want the root cause Manny? We live in a world where most people justify their existence by being better than someone else, and those who cannot express themselves will sometimes snap - hence the expression, "it's always the 'quiet' one." You can search and search for deeper answers, but the sad fact is, every once in a while, the quiet one is going to snap; and within our media driven society, the results, while not necessarily worse, will become more dramatic.

[Bluto Blutarsky]

You want the root cause Manny? We live in a world where most people justify their existence by being better than someone else, and those who cannot express themselves will sometimes snap - hence the expression, "it's always the 'quiet' one." You can search and search for deeper answers, but the sad fact is, every once in a while, the quiet one is going to snap; and within our media driven society, the results, while not necessarily worse, will become more dramatic.

Right on

[ALVAREZ6]

I think the American violence comes from the availabilty of many things, and less strict parents. Kids get the wrong image of things.

2 years ago, I remember when 2 brothers that live in California murdered their mom in an attempt to copy the Sopranos. They got the idea of the way they killed her from a certain episode from the show. People do stupid things.

What I think distorts the violence in the country is the population. There's a lot of people in the US, and with a lot of people comes a lot of dumbass morons that don't know anything about life.

Actually, I have no idea why this country has a violent society. This thread is interesting though, so people keep posting ideas, because I'm clueless.
:wtf

[Guru of Nothing]

There's a lot of people in the US, and with a lot of people comes a lot of dumbass morons that don't know anything about life.

I'm not laughing with you Alvarez.

[ChumpDumper]

Comparing the gun homicide rates between the US and those European countries cited in the WSJ article is pretty laughable. Even if the gun homicide rate in Switzerland doubled it would be about 1/3 that of the US. If Germany's gun homicide rate grew tenfold it still wouldn't come close to that of the US.

This is not to say that gun control is the only answeror even an answer. You're much more likely to be killed some other way in Taiwan or South Africa than by a gun in America.

[ALVAREZ6]

I'm not laughing with you Alvarez.
You misunderstood what I said.

What I said was that in general, there are stupid people everywhere you go, no matter which country or region.

[Guru of Nothing]

You misunderstood what I said.

What I said was that in general, there are stupid people everywhere you go, no matter which country or region.

You misunderstood what I was said, but I will leave at that.

[Slomo]

Comparing the gun homicide rates between the US and those European countries cited in the WSJ article is pretty laughable. Even if the gun homicide rate in Switzerland doubled it would be about 1/3 that of the US. If Germany's gun homicide rate grew tenfold it still wouldn't come close to that of the US.

This is not to say that gun control is the only answeror even an answer. You're much more likely to be killed some other way in Taiwan or South Africa than by a gun in America. I was going to say the exact same thing. That article is using statistics to prove something that isn't true. And although the data for the UK might be true for London, London is still way safer than most American big cities.

Lack of gun control is obviously not the only factor. It's just makes it a little easier on those "quiet ones" to secretly build up a stash of weapons that just begs to be used. Gun control prevents the "opportunistic" spur-of-the-moment cases - and that's already something, but not the solution to the problem.


You want the root cause Manny? We live in a world where most people justify their existence by being better than someone else, and those who cannot express themselves will sometimes snap - hence the expression, "it's always the 'quiet' one." You can search and search for deeper answers, but the sad fact is, every once in a while, the quiet one is going to snap; and within our media driven society, the results, while not necessarily worse, will become more dramatic. Although it's a bit unfair, that is the image that today's USA is projecting. Many people I know (usually those who have had very little contacts of any sorts with America) feel that the States are imposing itself on everybody else and that American do think they are better than others.

What do you guys think about the theory that in today's fast paced, consumer oriented society, we are just not noticing the "not so well adjusted" or as someone described them the "quiet ones" and we are just leaving them behind. Should we increase our sensitivity and spend more time (and yes money) to make shure they are not left behind, or is it just a normal Darwinian occurence and this is humanity's way to root out the weakest links? And if we do take care of the quiet ones will they be able to contribute to today's society and we'll all be better off because of them or would they just be charity projects?

How about the fantasy image we all have about the future of our children (you know the succesfull quarter back or blonde cheerleader pictures of success that grow up to become captains of industry and beauty queens). Are we teaching our children that those are not the only "real" forms of success? And are they believing us? Could it be that we are preaching one thing and doing the other?

[Guru of Nothing]

What do you guys think about the theory that in today's fast paced, consumer oriented society, we are just not noticing the "not so well adjusted" or as someone described them the "quiet ones" and we are just leaving them behind.

I think "not so well adjusted" are noticed; that's how many people tend to measure themselves, and perhaps that is magnified in a high school setting.