Red Lake shootings

At the time of the shooting, by some accounts, Jeff Weise was living with his paternal grandfather, Daryl Lussier Sr., a sergeant with the Red Lake Police Department, run by the Ojibwe (aka Chippewa) tribal government at the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The household included his grandfather's 32-year-old girlfriend, Michelle Leigh Sigana. Weise's paternal aunts said he had lived mostly with them for the past several years, and they helped him get treatment for behavioral issues and depression.[1] In 1999, Weise's mother suffered severe brain damage in an alcohol-related car accident and had since lived and received care in a nursing home. Still a child, Weise was forced to move from Minneapolis to live with his father's family on the reservation. His father had died by suicide in 1997,[2] so Weise was officially placed with his grandmother[2]

The reservation of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe is in northwest Minnesota and is one of two nationally that are "closed"; only Ojibwe tribal members may live there and own land. Its residents suffer high rates of unemployment, violence, and suicide. Housing is poor, and many students do not finish high school.[3] Work opportunities are limited on the reservation, which has a population of more than 5,000. A study in 2004 found that a high proportion of students in high school had thought of suicide.[4]

The day of the shootings, Weise retrieved a Ruger MK II .22 caliber pistol from his bedroom and fatally shot his grandfather as he was sleeping; he shot him two times in the head and ten times in the chest. According to his friends, Weise may have had the gun for as long as a year. He took Lussier's two police-issue weapons, a .40 caliber Glock 23 pistol and a 12 gauge Remington 870 pump-action shotgun, a gun belt and a bulletproof vest.[1] Weise then fatally shot Sigana, his grandfather's girlfriend, two times in the head as she carried laundry up the stairs.

The shooter then drove his grandfather's squad car to Red Lake Senior High School, arriving at around 2:45 p.m. CST. As he entered the school through the main entrance, he encountered two unarmed security guards manning a metal detector. The gunman shot and killed security guard Derrick Brun, while the other security guard escaped without injury. The shooter then proceeded into the main corridor of the school and tried to open several classroom doors, but most of them were locked. He went to the door of a 9th grade math classroom and tried to enter, but the door was locked. The teacher in this room reported seeing him through the window and watching him discover that he could shoot the glass beside the door to gain access, which he did, and then walked into her classroom.

Once inside this room, he began shooting at the students. The students did their best to hide but were bunched up against the back wall. There were 19 students and 3 teachers in this classroom. One teacher taught in this room; an English teacher whose class was in close proximity had retreated to this room to hide. She was caught pushing a cart returning items back the library when the gunman came walking down the hallway. The third teacher was visiting the class to deliver school basketball pictures to the students and just happened to be present.

The shooter fired upon the class with a Glock 22, .40 Cal pistol. In this classroom he shot and killed five students, severely wounded two others, and wounded one more. He also shot and killed the English teacher who had retreated to this classroom.

While firing upon the occupants in the classroom, the gunman ran out of ammunition and had to load another magazine. It was during this time that a male student got into an altercation with the gunman and tried to stab him with a pencil. The gunman managed to reload his firearm and shot this student in the face.

This altercation was a turning point, as the gunman left this classroom and went across the hall to the door of the science rooms. One student stepped out of his science room to see what was happening, and the gunman shot and wounded him. The shooter then shot through the window of another science classroom and wounded another student in that room. He then entered the classroom and began firing upon the students and teacher.

The students hid and crawled to the back of the science room into a multi-use office and lab supply room. The door to this office room was securely locked. The teacher held the doorknob from the inside as the shooter fired on the knob; the lock held. There was a back door leading into another classroom, and the students began exiting through this path. It was in this room that he depleted his ammo for the Glock pistol that he used. He left this pistol in this room on one of the lab tables. It remained with the slide open from the last shot and was very bloody.

The shooter then returned back to the Math classroom as law enforcement responders entered the scene. The previous victims were still in the classroom when the gunman exchanged gunfire with the law enforcement responders using the Ruger .22 Cal. pistol. It was during this exchange that the gunman received several gunshot wounds. Once wounded himself, the shooter began to yell that he had been shot and asked for help. Realizing that he was at an impasse, the gunman took the shotgun and fatally shot himself; the resulting blast killed him instantly. The ensuing blood and body matter sprayed the occupants and the ceiling of the classroom. At this point, the students able to escape then left. Law enforcement escorted the remaining survivors out of the building.

One student said that Chase Lussier (no direct relation to Weise's father or grandfather) sheltered her and was one of those shot and killed by Weise. Jeffrey May, a 16-year-old sophomore, tried to subdue Weise and stabbed him in the stomach with a pencil[5] May's diversion allowed students to flee the classroom to safety, but Weise shot him two times in the neck and once in the jaw, leaving him seriously injured.[3]

Witnesses said that the gunman smiled as he was shooting at people. One witness said that he asked a student if he believed in God.[6] This is believed to have been a reference to a widely publicized exchange during the 1999 Columbine High School massacre between perpetrator Dylan Klebold and Columbine survivor Valeen Schnurr.

The police arrived quickly and engaged him in gunfire. FBI Special Agent Paul McCabe said the shootout lasted for about four minutes. None of the police officers were injured.[6] After being hit three times in the lower back, right leg, and right arm by police gunfire, the shooter retreated to the classroom where he had shot and killed the teacher and students.[7] Remaining students in the class witnessed him lean against a wall, put the shotgun barrel to his chin, and fire, killing himself.[1]

The shootings lasted nine minutes. The gunman fired a total of 59 shots during the shooting spree: 14 at his grandfather's home and 45 at the school. He fired 37 rounds from his grandfather's Glock handgun, 14 from his Ruger handgun, and eight from the shotgun.[8]

• Buck Jourdain, Chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, said that the shootings were "one of the darkest and most painful occurrences in the history of our tribe."[11]
• Louis Jourdain, the son of the Tribal Chairman Floyd "Buck" Jourdain Jr., was arrested in connection with the shootings on March 28, 2005 and charged with conspiracy to commit murder.[12] He was charged based on several email messages which he exchanged with Weise related to plans for the Red Lake High School shooting. The government dropped the conspiracy charge; however, Jourdain pleaded guilty to transmitting threatening messages through the Internet.
• Derrick Brun, the killed security guard, was recognized for his bravery, with special recognition by President George W. Bush.
• Jeffrey May, a sophomore injured while trying to attack Weise, was highly praised. He was featured in Reader's Digest.[13][14]

Minnesota has a state fund that aids victims and their families. In addition, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa established a memorial fund; it reached $200,000 in donations from across the country by April 2005. Initially, the tribe made 15 grants of $5,000 each to victims and their families, including one to Weise's relatives. A tribal spokesman noted his family was not eligible for state compensation and said that they carried "a double burden." The grant was to help pay for Weise's funeral and burial.[15]

On July 21, 2006, the Red Lake school district reached a settlement with the families of the massacre victims. The school district agreed to pay $1,000,000 total to 21 of the victims' families, the maximum amount allowed by Minnesota law. Of the settlement, $900,000 was to be immediately granted to the families, and the remaining $100,000 to be set aside for future distribution.[16]

Jeffrey Weise was labeled an outsider in the Red Lake community and had recently been placed in "homebound" schooling for breaking school rules.[9] He was remembered as a quiet kid that normally wore a black trench coat and gel in his hair.[17]

Weise had grown up with a difficult and disrupted family life; his parents were a young unmarried couple who separated before he was born. His mother, Joanne Weise, was 17 years old at the time of his birth. Joanne's family insisted that she give up her son to the father, Daryl Lussier Jr., who was a few years older than her. Weise did not live with his mother again until after he was two years old, when she reclaimed him and took him to live in Minneapolis. In later online postings, Weise wrote that his mother had become an alcoholic who was sometimes physically and emotionally abusive.[18] Weise moved around often because of his mother, and attended several different schools during his adolescence.

In 1997, when Weise was eight years old, his father Daryl Lussier Jr. died by suicide at age 32, shooting himself after a days-long standoff with Red Lake tribal police.[19] Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier Sr., was a sergeant with the tribal police and was involved in the standoff.[20]

In 1999, when Weise was ten, his mother was in an alcohol-related car accident and suffered severe brain damage. She had to be committed to a nursing home for rehabilitation.[21][2] Weise was placed in the custody of his paternal grandmother, who lived on the Red Lake reservation. He had to leave Minneapolis, where he had lived most of his life, to live with her and other paternal relatives in Red Lake.[22]

Siblings of the victims and survivors participated in the 2018 School Walk Outs, which were designed to show respect for shooting victims seen nationally but especially in Florida and Red Lake.[27]

• List of massacres in Minnesota
• Gun violence in the United States
• Mass shootings in the United States
• List of rampage killers

• Red Lake Schools website
• Red Lake Net News
• Sota Iya Ye Yapi On-Line, Earth Sky Web
• Jeff Weise, "Target Practice" (animation), Newgrounds