Teen who killed 9 claimed Nazi leanings

Students describe ordeal
Student Reggie Graves said he was watching a movie about Shakespeare when he heard Weise blast his way past the metal detector.

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.

Terror in the classroom
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.

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.

Molly Miron / Bemidji Pioneer via AP 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.

MORE FROM CRIME & COURTS

Crime & courts Section Front

D.C.-area sniper ‘died very peacefully’ Imam wanted in Yemen over al-Qaida ties 2 dead, 2 hurt in office park shooting DA: Sheriff cleared for balloon case comments Lawyer: No ‘necessity defense’ for Roeder Campaign begins to stop human trafficking Booked! 12 charged in library thefts Student reporters allegedly paid witnesses Lawyer: Suspect just pitching to Letterman Crime & courts Section Front   Add Crime & courts headlines to your news reader: