On March 21, 2005, a domestic double homicide followed by a mass shooting occurred at two locations in the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. That afternoon, 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed his grandfather (an Ojibwe Red Lake police sergeant) and his grandfather's girlfriend at home. After taking his grandfather's police weapons and bulletproof vest, Weise drove his grandfather's police car to Red Lake Senior High School, where he was enrolled. Weise shot and killed seven people at the school and wounded nine others. The dead included an unarmed security guard at the entrance of the school, a teacher, and five students. After the police arrived, Weise exchanged gunfire with them. After being wounded, he committed suicide inside of a classroom. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in Minnesota.
Background
The reservation of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe is in northwest Minnesota and is one of two nationally that are "closed", i.e. only Ojibwe tribal members may live and own land there. Its residents suffer high rates of unemployment, violence, and suicide. Housing is poor, and many students do not finish high school. Work opportunities are limited on the reservation, which has a population of more than 5,000, and the unemployment rate was around 60 percent at the time of the shooting. A study in 2004 found that a high proportion of students in high school had thought of suicide. Half of the class of 2004 did not graduate from Red Lake Senior High School; Weise was enrolled in the school’s homebound program, which let students in the program complete schoolwork at home. The program was created to help at-risk students graduate. The nearest grocery stores are 32 miles (51 km) away from Red Lake in Bemidji.
Shootings
Lakeside Home shooting
On the day of the shootings, at 2:47 p.m., Weise retrieved a .22 caliber Ruger MKII pistol from his bedroom and fatally shot his grandfather, Daryl Lussier Sr., as he was sleeping; he shot him two times in the head and ten times in the chest. According to Weise's friends, he may have had the gun for as long as a year. He took Lussier's police gear, a .40 caliber Glock 22 pistol, a 12 gauge Remington 870 pump-action shotgun, a gun belt and a bulletproof vest. Weise then fatally shot Michelle Sigana, his grandfather's girlfriend, two times in the head as she carried laundry up the stairs.
Weise also intended to take a AR-15 style rifle but he found it to be jammed. Police later said that if the rifle had been used, the death toll could have been much higher.
Red Lake High School shooting
Weise then drove his grandfather's squad car to Red Lake Senior High School where he arrived two minutes later at 2:49 p.m. and rammed the vehicle into the school building. As he entered the school through the main entrance, he encountered two unarmed security guards manning a metal detector. Weise shot and killed security guard Derrick Brun with the shotgun, while the other security guard, Leann Grant, escaped without injury, warning students and teachers to take cover. Weise proceeded into the main corridor of the school and wounded English teacher Neva Rogers who was pushing a computer cart and conversing with students in the hallway. The students scattered and Rogers ran to knock on Missy Dodd's classroom door. She was let in and initiated lockdown procedures, turning off lights, locking the door, and ushering the students under the tables.
Not long after Neva Rogers entered Missy Dodd's room, at 2:51 p.m., Weise shot out the glass panel next to the classroom door, reached his arm through, unlocked the door, and stepped into Dodd's study hall. There were fifteen students and three adults in the room. Neva Rogers began to pray, crying "God be with us!" Weise shot her once in the head using the Glock handgun, killing her instantly.
Weise then told students, "If any of you believe in God, now would be a good time to call in a favor." Weise approached a group of students, asking, "Do you guys believe in God?" One student, Chon'gai'la Morris replied no, and Weise passed over him. The rest of the group remained silent, and as a result were shot at. Weise then turned and asked other students the same question; those who replied in the affirmative or hesitated to answer were wounded or killed, while those who denied believing in God were left uninjured.
Jeffrey May, a 16-year-old sophomore, tried to wrestle Weise inside the classroom and stabbed him in the stomach with a pencil. 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. Weise left Dodd's room a few minutes later to search for more targets. Three students and one teacher were killed in the class and five more students had been hurt. Weise wandered through the halls and managed to force his way into another classroom, where he wounded two more students. A girl hiding inside this classroom heard the shooter ask, "Do you believe in God?" This time, he did not wait for answers and fired immediately and indiscriminately after posing the question.
Witnesses said Weise smiled as he was shooting at people. Several survivors claimed that he asked students if they believed in God, shooting them if they answered yes or hesitated to answer. This is believed to have been a reference to a widely publicized exchange between Dylan Klebold and Valeen Schnurr during Columbine high school massacre. Weise had also used the screen name "do you believe in god" on several internet accounts. Ryan Auginash was wounded when he affirmed his faith in Christianity. Lance Crowe was also wounded for refusing to answer.
At around 2:54 p.m., Weise returned to the main entrance, where he wounded two students. Tribal 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. After being hit three times in the lower back, right leg, and right arm by police gunfire, Weise retreated to Miss Dodd's classroom again, yelling "I have hostages!" Weise shot and killed two more students who were hiding under tables, before leaning against a wall, putting the shotgun barrel to his chin, and firing, instantly killing himself at 2:58 p.m.
The shootings lasted nine minutes. Weise 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.
Victims
A total of ten people, including the perpetrator, died in the shootings:
- Daryl Lussier Sr., 58, police sergeant and Weise's paternal grandfather
- Michelle Sigana, 32, Lussier's girlfriend
- Derrick Brun, 28, security guard
- Neva Rogers, 62, English teacher
- Alicia White, 14, student
- Thurlene Stillday, 15, student
- Chanelle Rosebear, 15, student
- Chase Lussier, 15, student
- Dewayne Lewis, 15, student
- Jeffrey Weise, 16, perpetrator/student
Perpetrator
Shortly after the shooting, Jeffrey James "Jeff" Weise (August 8, 1988 – March 21, 2005) was identified as the perpetrator. At the time of the shooting, Jeff Weise was living with his paternal grandfather, Daryl Lussier Sr., a sergeant with the Red Lake Police Department, run by the Ojibwe tribal government at the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The household included his grandfather's 32-year-old girlfriend, Michelle Leigh Sigana. Jeff was labelled an outsider and a loner in the Red Lake community and had recently been placed in "homebound" schooling for breaking school rules.
Life
Jeff Weise was born to 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 lived with his parents and family in the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Jeff 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 where they lived in a mobile home behind a factory. Jeff then only occasionally saw his father when his mother sent him on four-hour trips to see him. In reports and in Jeff's online postings, his mother was described as an alcoholic who was physically and emotionally abusive.
His mother was involved with many different men who would also abuse him, and in 1992, his mother began dating a man who also abused Jeff. After having two children, the couple married on June 27, 1998. 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 died by suicide at the age of 32; he shot himself with a shotgun after a days-long standoff with Red Lake tribal police. Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier Sr., a sergeant with the tribal police was present at the scene and attempted to talk his son down, to no avail. Two years later in 1999, 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. Weise was placed in the custody of his paternal grandmother, having to leave Minneapolis, where he had lived most of his life, to live with her and other paternal relatives on the Red Lake reservation.
Weise became close to his paternal grandfather and his younger companion, Michelle Sigana, who had given him his own room with them. The family said he had a good relationship with both. In 2000, his mother and her husband separated; they completed the divorce in May 2004. Their custody arrangements covered only the children they had together, and not Weise. By 2003, his mother had moved to an assisted-living facility; she had recovered enough from her accident to work part-time, and had regained speech. Weise chose to stay with his grandmother rather than rejoin his mother and move again.
In 2002, Weise was forced to repeat the eighth grade because of failing grades and truancy; he enrolled in a special education program at the school called the Learning Center. Beginning in middle school, Weise was frequently taunted and bullied by other students.
In September 2003, Weise enrolled at Red Lake Senior High School in Red Lake. Teachers and fellow students remembered him as withdrawn, and he reportedly had a history of troublesome behavior. At times he was referred to be homeschooled. His grandmother said he had not been in school for five weeks before the shooting. His social studies teacher Wanda Baxter recalled, "[Weise] was a good listener like any other ordinary student. He was quiet but never a troublemaker." Another teacher described Weise as "a pretty bright kid, but ... lazy when it came to school." Several students remembered Weise as being non-violent. A close friend of Weise described him as "the only one I talked to about my problems. He was trustworthy, and he was always capable of understanding what I was going through", and other students also said they could talk to him. According to police investigator findings and media reports, Weise was often bullied or teased in school by classmates. A tall 6'3" youth weighing 250 pounds (115 kg), he was known to wear dark eyeliner, as well as a long black trench coat and other black clothing to school year round. He was referred to as a "goth kid" by many of his classmates. Although Weise was sometimes described as a loner, several students said he had numerous friends. He had a notebook in which he drew what a close friend described as "dark stuff".
Internet activities
Weise was discovered to have been quite active on the Internet. According to The Smoking Gun, Weise created two violent Flash animations for the flash website Newgrounds, using the alias "Regret". One animation, entitled "Target Practice", features a character who murders three people with a rifle, blows up a police car with a grenade, and kills a Klansman. The 30-second animation ends with the shooter putting the gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Weise had created another Flash animation, entitled "Clown", in which a clown kills a man by eating his head. A LiveJournal account, apparently created by Weise, contained three entries posted between December 2004 and January 2005. The weblog was customized to be rendered in black and white. In his posts, Weise expressed his desire for change and salvation in his life. He was also interested in zombies, and under the alias "Blades11", he would publish short stories to the website "Rise of the Dead" about humans trying to survive in a zombie apocalypse.