Posted on 03/21/2005 8:10:27 PM PST by neverdem
CHICAGO, March 21 - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota on Monday, killing his grandparents, five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard, as well as himself, the authorities said.
A dozen other students were injured in the barrage, which erupted at the 300-student Red Lake High School about 3 p.m., officials said. The grandparents were apparently killed at their home earlier in the day, and the authorities were investigating whether the murder weapon was a revolver taken from the grandfather, an officer on the tribal force.
Neither shooter nor victims were identified by the authorities, but the Red Lake Net News, a Web site affiliated with the tribe, named the gunman's grandfather as Daryl Lussier, as did several people in the community in telephone interviews.
"It will probably take us throughout the night to really put the whole picture together," Paul McCabe, an F.B.I. spokesman in Minneapolis, told reporters at a briefing. "It's still a very fluid investigation. Right now there's still a lot of work to do."
Mr. McCabe did say that "we do have evidence that we believe that the shooter is dead," and that "we believe he was acting alone."
The shooting was the worst at a school since the one in 1999 at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., where 15 people were killed.
Roman Stately, director of the Red Lake Fire Department, told The Associated Press and local television stations that the police found the bodies of the grandparents an hour after the school shooting, and that the young man used his grandfather's service weapon in the rampage.
"Apparently, he walked down the hallway shooting and then he entered a classroom," Mr. Stately told KARE-TV, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul. "He shot several students and a teacher, then himself."
Mr. McCabe said the victims at the high school were all found in one room. The dead teacher was a woman, he said, the security guard a man; four students, including the gunman, died at the scene and two more later at the hospital.
"A teacher pulled the kids down on the ground, under the benches," Molly Miron, the editor of the nearby Bemidji Pioneer newspaper, told a radio station after interviewing a teacher who was in the room when the shootings occurred.
The Red Lake reservation, about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities and about 120 miles south of Canada, is home to a band of about 5,000 Ojibwa Indians, commonly called Chippewa. The tribe operates three casinos and other tourist attractions on some half-million acres.
Clyde Bellencourt, founder of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement, said he could not "remember anything as tragic as this happening" on a reservation.
"Everyone in the Indian community is feeling really bad right now, whether they're a member of the Red Lake or not, we're all an extended family, we're all related," he said. "Usually this happens in places like Columbine, white schools, always somewhere else. We never hear that in our community." Mr. Bellencourt and his brother Vernon, another longtime American Indian leader, said that the shooter's grandfather had been on the local police force for perhaps 35 years, and belonged to one of the tribe's most prominent and respected families.
"No one would ever think that that type of violence would visit itself in our communities," Vernon Bellencourt said.
"But our young people are not exempt from the same problems young people have across the country," he added, "so our communities are now being victimized by this same kind of violence."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Mikkel Patesfrom Fargo, N.D.; Kermit Patterson from Minneapolis; and Gretchen Reuthling in Chicago.
Good God, what the hell is going on with our kids today?
Listerine is the choice of the sophisticated ones my son deals with in the Twin Cities. He has one regular "customer" that reeks but his breath is nice and fresh.
that's it, we have to ban Reservations....they are too dangerous.
I heard driving in that he was the son of a police officer. Another case where a total ban/confiscation of firearms, except for law enforcement, would not have made a difference.
The reports that I've been reading list the little monster as the grandchild of a retired police officer. Both grandparents were shot and killed before the firearms were stolen. Haven't yet heard the status of the parents at this point.
Thank goodness the Supreme Court has ruled that this kid will never have to suffer the death penalty. Now we'll just need to warehouse him with three hots and a cot for the next fifty years or so...
~ Blue Jays ~
It just pi--es me off that the media passes that crap off without comment. (But doesn't surprise)
A few years back, his grandson murdered (shot to death) a white kid who caught Bellecourt stealing.
Of course, it was RACISM !!!
Bellecourt & the Minnesota media make me sick
Too bad a teacher and/or administrator didn't have ready access to firearms so they could have possibly stopped this nutcase early on.
Gun-Free Zones = Victim RICH Environments
I read somewhere, that the father is taking the "eternal dirt nap", having committed suicide a while back, and the mother is in a nursing home after suffering a brain injury in a car accident.
All of it probably related to "firewater"-abuse.
This will put me at odds with many of you but I think it's a combination of the fact that this area was remote (which is why there were no helicopters or reports "on the scene" immediately and there were only small press reports.
I think another reason though is the fact that it wasn't white kids. (see Jon Benet, Columbine and the intensive coverage that ensues)
EXACTLY! I was talking with my wife last night about this and other types of gun crimes. The knee jerk reaction by politicians (on both sides, seemingly) is that "we need to make a new law". And as I pointed out to my wife, anecdotally, no law will ever stop a crimal from committing a crime.
The thing to do is arm the population (not necessarily literally) with the possibility that he or she can be packing at anytime, anywhere. When a criminal knows, for certain, that the law abiding citizen CANNOT legally be 'concealing/carrying' then EVERYONE is a mark.
Planting a little doubt in the crimnal and empowering the law abiding citizen is the way to go. And besides, we all know (or should know) that most criminals don't obtain guns by legal means anyway.
Or, it could be that tribal police shut the res down, which IS what happened.
That too, but I'm speaking more along the lines of post coverage...ensuing coverage.
What?? You mean the shooter didn't go thru the background check and waiting period, didn't take his weapon down to the cop shop and have it checked over? But...but they told me I couldn't have a handgun unless I did that. Said it was the LAW!
There oughta be a law: No laws for guns, everyone who wants to, carries. We should at least create the illusion of an even playing field.
I read in an AP story out today (Student gunman kills 9 in rampage, Joshua Freed, AP), and printed in a chicago newspaper, that mentioned this fact TWICE. Once, near the beginning of the story, and once again, near the end. Have these anti-gun types NO SHAME? (a rhetorical question, since we all know the answer)
and it is hardly on the news at all. Is this because they can't get reporters and cameras to the scene?
This case won't receive as much attention from the anti-gun, left-wing media, and for MANY reasons...
1. Apparently (or at least we think at this point), the perp wasn't WHITE, and in fact, was a much-vaunted American Indian (sorry PC Police... a NATIVE-American. HELL... he was an INJUN.).
2. The guns were taken from a COP. Since anti-gun libs, whether they admit it or not, would like to ban all guns, except for the military and POLICE, this story doesn't work for them.
3. Liberals are actually much to blame for this, since it is they who created the Victim Rich Environment (which they like to call Gun-Free School Zones), AND, it was probably typical YANKEE liberals in Minnesota that prevented two guards at the school from being armed. What good are unarmed guards at a school? Apparently NO GOOD.
4. At this point, it doesn't sound as if the guns used were EVIL, BLACK "Assault" weapons. Though, with the ever-changing "definitions" put out by the anti-gun maggots at the VPC and the Brady Bunch, that is subject to change.
I actually agree with you on this; no laws for gun owners because most of the laws, in fact all laws are 'feel good'. Create an 'even playing field'. But, to carry it further, I would say there should be now laws regarding speech, religion, et al.
Again, I'm sure I would be at odds with most here because I think Congress is out of line with the fines on 'indecent behavior', etc.
Hell, we are so far past anything based on 'original intent' and have been for nearly 100 years sometimes I just don't know what to think.. just read Walter E. Williams and calm myself, I guess.
Bottom line is in every village, there is a white guy that makes his living selling them booze. When the sober native leaders go to the state liqour boards and beg to have liqour license revoked because of all the alcohol related deaths they are laughed at and rebuffed. Our village was 400 natives 100 years back; now 28 remain. We have lost 5 to alcohol in the last 2 years. Freeze in snowbanks, get drunk and burn up in their cabin, suicide in drunken stupor, just on and on. Sad thing is everyone can see the nx five to die too.
Got to remember, these were a stoneage people 50 years back; I really believe that 5 generation timeframe to assimilate into our world now that I have seen theirs. So many of their problems would go away if they could just limit access to the alcohol.
You see in most native villages, school age kids are 80% FAS and causes all kinds of problems. Most natives I have known all went thru alcoholism during their younger years too; but some come out of it and they become village leaders. But you have all these young mothers drinking during their child bearing years.
Not putting down natives, I spend alot of time with them and respect many. Just feel bad to see what's happening to their culture due to booze.
I don't see any racism in our village; but maybe its how I am perceived also. Yu kinda got to be the only white boy in a village for a year in order to learn how to get along and fit in. Our family goes to all the potlatches, birthdays, holiday dinners, even had the wife and I out doing the duck dance by fiddle music at new years eve. Do they play red river jig in your area?
Don't take alot of material things to keep them happy as long as they can hunt ducks in spring, salmon all summer, caribou & moose late summer and fall, and snare rabbits during winter; they have what they need. I just hate seeing how alcohol has become part of their culture too cause its destroying them.
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