Witnesses Says that the Guard Stood His Ground against Teen

The Red Lake community grappled with trauma of a high school shooting rampage that had left 10 people dead and seven wounded, a friend of gunman Jeff Weise said Weise had been haunted by personal loss and once had threatened to “shoot up the school.”

Weise, liked the heavy metal music of Marilyn Manson, which was used an instant messenger sign-on of December of the soul and claimed Adolf Hitler as a hero, said Michelle Kingbird, whose brother Ryan Auginash, was wounded in the shooting Monday at Red Lake High School on a remote Indian reservation in northern Minnesota. In the last few months of his short life, Jeff Weise left a lengthy trail on the Internet of his obsession with death.

Weise created several profiles that he used while chatting about government conspiracies, visiting Nazi websites or posting references to suicide and school shootings. On Monday, the troubled boy killed nine people and himself at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who said President Bush was briefed on the shooting Monday.

“The FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office in Minnesota will commit all resources needed to learn the acts behind this tragedy and provide comfort and relief to this grieving community.” “I am very concerned there be resources in place for the police department, the school and the public. There isn’t a person in Red Lake that hasn’t lost at least a cousin. That is the tragedy of this type of crime in this close a community. A community where family is everything.”

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger, in comments made to Minnesota Public Radio “I think it’s time that our state takes a look at what’s happening on some of these reservations, and it’s unfortunate that it takes a tragic instance like this to call attention to what is happening.” Kingbird said Weise had once before spoken of shooting people at the school. “Just once,” she said. “[Last] March he told me he was gonna do it on 4/20, and I didn’t believe him.” In an instant message to Kingbird, Weise said he had chosen the date (which also coincides with the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado) because it was the birthday of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and “Hitler was his hero” (see “High School Shooter Reportedly Admired Hitler, Was Previously Investigated”).

Weise, whom Kingbird and said that he had tried to commit suicide last month and been hospitalized and placed on antidepressant medication, never mentioned the Columbine murders to her. She said she didn’t see him on Monday, but that they had chatted on the computer the day before. When asked if she was angry with Weise for what he had done, Kingbird said, “No, he was my friend, but he also killed some of my friends, too. All the times I was sad he made me feel happy.” And, despite his injuries, Ryan Auginash, also a friend of Weise’s, has already forgiven the killer for his actions, according to his brother Andrew.