10 Killed in Minnesota School Shooting...

[CbusRed]

Horrible....


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...chool_shooting

10 Dead in Minn. Teen Rampage, Police Say

28 minutes ago
U.S. National - AP

By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press Writer

BEMIDJI, Minn. - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on an 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 suspect apparently killed himself after exchanging gunfire with police.


AFP Slideshow: Eight Killed in Minn. High School Shooting


It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999 that killed 13 people.



One student said her classmates pleaded with the gunman 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, 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.



In addition to the shooter, the death toll at the school included five students, a teacher and a security guard, FBI (news - web sites) spokesman Paul McCabe said 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 investigated the shootings.



Hegstrom described the shooter 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 gunman. 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 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."



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 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.

Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe, called it "without a doubt the darkest hour" in the group's history. "There has been a considerable amount of lives lost, and we still don't know the total of that," Jourdain 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 Indians.

___

[RedFanAlways1966]

Unfortunate.

I think all schools need an armed guard and a metal detector. Instead of taxes paying for 15 guidance counselors (that few students use anyhow), 5 drug counselors (parents job... like guidance)... today's society calls for more school security.

Only takes one nutjob to take out 9 innocent lives. I'd rather have my tax money being used to protect kids than being spent on two-bit crap like too many guidance counselors (and other things that is the job of the parents).

I am sure my comments will raise some ire here. But a 15-year-old is plenty old enough to brandish a weapon and take lives. Even if the principal and vice-principal are allowed to carry guns... that is better than zero protection or an unarmed security guard.

Nothing good about any school shooting. But it would be "better" if more precautions were taken. Metal detector at minimum!!

[Red Heeler]

What a terrible tragedy. I cannot imagine what the parents of those students and the community as a whole are going through right now.

One more reason why gun licensing and ownership laws need to be made much much tougher.

[TeamCasey]

One more reason why gun licensing and ownership laws need to be made much much tougher.

Bingo. How many more kids need to die before people see that? Unfortunately, probably a lot more.

[zombie-a-go-go]

One more reason why gun licensing and ownership laws need to be made much much tougher.

Negative, ghostrider.

The onus of this tragedy rests squarely on the shoulders of the parents who allowed their child to become a psychopath, and the relatives who owned firearms and failed to secure them. Tougher gun laws restrict the freedoms of those who do practice, fervently, proper firearm safety, and leaves them helpless against those who would not abide by such laws.

The guy who breaks into your house doesn't really care whether or not the government says you can have a firearm, but definitely cares about whether or not you have a gun in the house.

[Red Heeler]

Negative, ghostrider.

The onus of this tragedy rests squarely on the shoulders of the parents who allowed their child to become a psychopath, and the relatives who owned firearms and failed to secure them. Tougher gun laws restrict the freedoms of those who do practice, fervently, proper firearm safety, and leaves them helpless against those who would not abide by such laws.

The guy who breaks into your house doesn't really care whether or not the government says you can have a firearm, but definitely cares about whether or not you have a gun in the house.

I'm not at all sold on the efficacy of gun ownership on deterring crime.

However, I am not talking about restricting the ownership of guns. What I am talking about is getting tough on the irresponsible gun owners. I would like to see mandatory licensing for all guns. If you are caught with a gun for which you have no license, you go to jail for a long time. I would also like to see a requirement that all guns be kept in a locked, built in or otherwise immovable safe. If your gun is used in a crime, you go to jail for a long time.

[TRF]

Negative, ghostrider.

The onus of this tragedy rests squarely on the shoulders of the parents who allowed their child to become a psychopath, and the relatives who owned firearms and failed to secure them. Tougher gun laws restrict the freedoms of those who do practice, fervently, proper firearm safety, and leaves them helpless against those who would not abide by such laws.

The guy who breaks into your house doesn't really care whether or not the government says you can have a firearm, but definitely cares about whether or not you have a gun in the house.

You never hear about this happening in London.

Just sayin.

[zombie-a-go-go]

You never hear about this happening in London.

Just sayin.

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America’s has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml

The Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm

[TRF]

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America’s has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

http://www.reason.com/0211/fe.jm.gun.shtml

The Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm

no guns = no gun deaths.

I hunt for my steak at Wal-Mart.

[Johnny Footstool]

Only takes one nutjob to take out 9 innocent lives. I'd rather have my tax money being used to protect kids than being spent on two-bit crap like too many guidance counselors (and other things that is the job of the parents).

I would think a combination of better security and more counseling would do more to prevent future problems than simply increasing security.

The kid had mental problems that should have been identified and treated. A decent counseling program in his school would probably have done more to prevent this tragedy than a fully-armed security staff.

[Reds/Flyers Fan]

Interesting how these episodes always happen in rural or suburban settings. Columbine HS is in Littleton, a well-to-do Denver suburb. And Red Lake is just remote. These never happen in inner city Detroit or Cincinnati, places you'd expect.

[CbusRed]

Interesting how these episodes always happen in rural or suburban settings. Columbine HS is in Littleton, a well-to-do Denver suburb. And Red Lake is just remote. These never happen in inner city Detroit or Cincinnati, places you'd expect.

It happens, seems like every week there is a story about a kid getting caught with a gun in school here in columbus.. just a week ago, a second grader has a 9mm in his bookbag, AT SCHOOL, was playing with it, it went off, and now he is missing a few fingers. The kids older brother is charged with criminal negligence.

[GAC]

Interesting how these episodes always happen in rural or suburban settings. Columbine HS is in Littleton, a well-to-do Denver suburb. And Red Lake is just remote. These never happen in inner city Detroit or Cincinnati, places you'd expect.

That's because it's a regularity in the streets.

I read this article in Sunday's DDN. I found it quite disturbing. It seems alot of today's youth find an outlet for their anger by taking a route (guns) that ends up being deadly.

Teen-age bravado, war of words can lead to deadly, devastating results

By Kelli Wynn

Dayton Daily News


DAYTON — The fight would be in the 3100 block of Prescott Avenue, and Mike Goodner Stewart and two of his teen friends decided they needed more backup.

So Stewart, only 17, called his half brother Kelly "Donell" Goodner, another 17-year-old.

Goodner got the call and immediately left his Trotwood residence, taking the four-mile, 10-minute drive to Dayton to be by his half-brother's side.

That decision would leave Goodner in a local hospital being treated for at least one shotgun blast that ripped through his stomach and has left him damaged for life.

This particular sequence of events — a challenge to fight with fists that quickly escalated into a battle involving weapons — worries community members concerned about the sometimes deadly turn teen confrontations can take. The events also provide a glimpse into what can happen when teen-age bravado goes too far.

"They will run to a fight

instead of turning away, said Marlon Shackelford, youth specialist for Omega Baptist Church. "This society teaches us drama is OK. (But) drama leads to trauma."

Donell Goodner ran to the fight, right into the drama. Now, his grandmother said, he's lost his stomach and spleen and is hooked up to a feeding tube.

"He'll be hurting for the rest of his life," said the grandmother, Shirley Robinson.

Robinson also said Goodner and another 17-year-old, Tearonn D. Daniel, knew each other, though she was unsure how well. Daniel died Thursday night after an unidentified gunmen shot six people.

On March 12, Stewart said he was sitting in his living room with a group of acquaintances, boys and girls, when one of the girls' cell phones rang. The voice on the other end demanded to know why the girls were at Stewart's house, why they would hang with a loser and using expletives for emphasis. One of Stewart's 15-year-old male friends overheard the comments, and from there, it was on. Stewart and his crew, the YAK — young and krazy — agreed to meet and fight the people on the other end of the cell phone.

They agreed they would fight with fists.

Stewart and his friends hoped a large crowd would show up so they could start "fighting everybody. We hope they bring a lot of people ...We didn't want to jump nobody. So everything would be fair," Stewart said, recalling the conversation prior to the fight.

Stewart arrived with four others — three teen males and a pregnant female — from the YAK. The group isn't a gang, Stewart said, but a "set" made up of family and close friends. The opponents arrived with eight fighters — five males, three females, and Stewart thought some looked older than 18. They met on Prescott Avenue — ironically, near a church called Spirit of Peace about 10 p.m., and it was on — verbal jousting, posturing, and finally, fists fights.

But at some point, someone flashed a BB gun. Detective Julie Swisher said police found a pellet gun at the scene but don't know who it belonged to.

One of the opponents went to a nearby car, pulled out a shotgun, and started firing. Goodner started running, ran all the way back to Stewart's house. There, Goodner collapsed on an upstairs bed, crying. Stewart soon found out why —his half brother had been shot. The left side of Goodner's leather jacket, worn on top of a hoodie and a couple of T-shirts, looked as if it had been clawed by a cat.

Police have not determined how many times Goodner was shot "because of the type of shot he was shot with...The exact type of shotgun shell will have to be determined by the lab," Swisher said.

Robinson said she wasn't surprised her grandson got involved in the fight. "He is protective of his family," Robinson said.

At first, police thought the fight was over a girl, but now say a war of words caused the battle.

"It was about fighting and we got the best of them...so they started shooting," Stewart said.

But the fighting too often spirals into injury and death.

"Young men cannot take the butt whipping" and that's why they use weapons, said Sean Walton, Juvenile Mentoring Project Coordinator for Community Action Partnership. The partnership mentors teens.

"It's not fear of safety. It's fear of embarassment and loss of approval from friends," Walton said. He also noted that some youth who are afraid to be seen as "soft or weak" if they walk away from an argument.

Shackelford added: "They feel they have to save face — you know who I am and if you cross the line, I'm going to get with you. They are scared of the repercussions. If I beat you up with my fists one on one, I'm scared that you might come back and shoot so I might as well shoot you."

Al "Coach" Powell, adjunct Clinical Associate Professor for Stony Brook Health Sciences Center in Stony Brook, NY, said: "When weapons were not plentiful we used our fists and words. Now we use words in order to set up our opportunities to use our weapons."

Robinson said she goes to the hospital every day, right before work, to see her grandson. He once had dreams of becoming a boxer, and was trying to get his GED. She said Goodner's distraught mother is trying to cope with the tragedy.

"Donell is a loving little boy," Robinson said. "I wish Donell wouldn't have went because of the outcome...I used to tell him all the time, don't fight because these kids are crazy, they will hurt you out here."

[Johnny Footstool]

Tougher gun laws restrict the freedoms of those who do practice, fervently, proper firearm safety, and leaves them helpless against those who would not abide by such laws.

And for the other side of the argument...

Tougher gun laws usually involve a waiting period to purchase a weapon. Those who do practice firearm safety already own guns and probably don't need to own another weapon instantly. And I don't see how a waiting period leaves someone "helpless."

Also, IMO, those who are fervent practitioners of firearm safety would be likely to follow any new laws. The irresponsible few who object to restrictions would most likely be the ones who would leave their guns unsecured.

The purpose of gun control is not to take guns out of the hands of responsible users, but to prevent irresponsible users from purchasing guns.

That said, I don't think gun control laws would have prevented this situation. This kid had problems.

When I was in 7th grade, a 9th grader brought a rifle to school. He was looking for the jocks that had tormented him for years. He didn't find them, luckily -- they were in the lunchroom (I was in there, too) -- but he wounded two teachers and a student, and he killed the principal.

He was fully trained in gun safety and used his own licensed hunting rifle to do the shooting.

The kid had problems. Problems that gun control laws couldn't have fixed.

[reds1869]

And for the other side of the argument...

Tougher gun laws usually involve a waiting period to purchase a weapon. Those who do practice firearm safety already own guns and probably don't need to own another weapon instantly. And I don't see how a waiting period leaves someone "helpless."

Also, IMO, those who are fervent practitioners of firearm safety would be likely to follow any new laws. The irresponsible few who object to restrictions would most likely be the ones who would leave their guns unsecured.

The purpose of gun control is not to take guns out of the hands of responsible users, but to prevent irresponsible users from purchasing guns.

That said, I don't think gun control laws would have prevented this situation. This kid had problems.

When I was in 7th grade, a 9th grader brought a rifle to school. He was looking for the jocks that had tormented him for years. He didn't find them, luckily -- they were in the lunchroom (I was in there, too) -- but he wounded two teachers and a student, and he killed the principal.

He was fully trained in gun safety and used his own licensed hunting rifle to do the shooting.

The kid had problems. Problems that gun control laws couldn't have fixed.

I remember that, and have often wondered when looking at your location.

I am a teacher who has taught in an urban setting and can tell you that the armed guards would do nothing but become the first one shot. And these things DO happen in urban schools--we had two students shot at our school last year. They just don't make the news as no one is shocked and frankly no one in the suburbs cares.

No amount of security will stop a determined person. A Deterent is only a deterent to those who care...and a nutjob could care less about their own life or that of another.