Posted on 03/21/2005 2:50:05 PM PST by wallcrawlr
Thanks for the ping!
I think you're right. Here's another nugget I found from a KSTP news article:
Tribal police ordered reporters off the reservation after Monday's shootings
That could slow the news flow a tad
If anything, I'd suggest that it would be the allegation of gang-related activity more than anything else. Every day, there are shootings between gangs all over the country. Nobody really cares, and frankly... rightfully so.
By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press Writer
BEMIDJI, Minn. - 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.
Do you really want an answer to that? Who gives a s**t about dead indians?
This is very sad and very shocking. I would never expect it to happen on a reservation. The tribes are so family-oriented; the families are so close-knit.
I wonder what went so terribly wrong with this boy?
I believe what Eaker is trying to say (very poliitley I might add) is that getting shot by a 12 guage shotgun at the range consistent with the size of a classroom, would be like getting shot by 12 to 15 .38 caliber rounds at the same time.
You may be thinking that the pellets are tiny little things smaller than typical BBs, and that might be the case if the shooter was using #8 shot or smaller. But chances are it was 00 Buckshot. Even in the case of #8 shot, at close range, that would be a shredder, and very lethal -- think 60 to 80 BBs travelling at over 1000 feet per second in a tight formation.
Very ugly, in other words.
"Just TRY fishing on their half of Red Lake."
I have a deer head hanging on the basement wall from the Red Lake reservation. My Dad got it many moons ago (shortly after WWII I believe).
All media were kicked out by tribal police.
This is just horrible. My heart goes out to the families affected by this slaughter.
Some people in the community are saying that the murderer was known to have mental illness and taking medication.
The national TV silence is surprising. I think the shotgun was used on the poor security guard.
God bless his/her soul.
Because it doesn't involve Terri Schiavo?
Could be.
And the gun owner isn't alive anymore to drag through the courts to make an example of and get sued by everyone involved. To the anti gun crowd, no circus means no news.
I go to the boundary waters often, love northern MN, beautiful
What a sad week.
Must be pretty expensive to send crews up there with video feeds.
Sure that Katie Couric will have something to say tomorrow morning...talking to Sarah Brady, etc..
Gawd...how cynical I've become!
Have the liberals in Congress introduced a gun banning bill yet?
Who gives a s**t about dead indians?
That would be my estimation. Just look at any thread here on FR and see how many posts before the jokes, or tax and casino whining starts. While others have stated that the remoteness of the town and the refusal of tribal police to talk to the media is the reason for lack of reporting, it doesn't take explicit details to merely report that there has been a shooting. Most are barely mentioning it.
Even Foxnews, how many times do they sit and blather on without any information or details whatsoever? The talking heads will sit and speculate for hours, imagining things, but not having an ounce of information.
RIP to these victims.
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