10 die in worst student rampage since Columbine BEMIDJI, Minn. — A high-school student went on a shooting rampage on an Indian reservation yesterday, killing his grandparents at their home and then seven people at his school, grinning and waving as he fired, authorities and witnesses said. The boy, identified by school workers as Jeff Wiese, apparently killed himself after exchanging gunfire with police. It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999. One student said her classmates pleaded with the boy 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 newspaper. Before the shootings at Red Lake High School, Wiese's grandparents were shot in their home; they later died. There was no immediate indication of the gunman's motive. In addition to Wiese, the death toll at the school included five students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said in Minneapolis. Fourteen or 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 Wiese 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 Wiese and the couple killed at the home, but Red Lake Fire Director Roman Stately said they were Wiese's grandparents. He identified the 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 cellphone. 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. McCabe would not comment on reports that the gunman shot himself, and said it was too early to speculate on a motive. "It will probably take us throughout the night to really put the whole picture together," he said. 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 doing something,' and the next thing he knew, the kid walked in there and pointed the gun right at him," Thunder 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 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. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002215403_shoot22.html
