Stately said the gunman killed his grandfather, whom the fire official identified as Daryl Lussier, a longtime officer with the Red Lake Police Department. He said that the shooter had two handguns and a shotgun and that they may have been Lussier's guns, according to AP.
The killings yesterday were the second major school shooting in Minnesota in recent years. In September 2003, two students were shot at Rocori High School in Cold Spring in central Minnesota. John Jason McLaughlin, a student who was 15 at the time of the shooting, awaits trial in the case.
Red Lake School Superintendent Stuart Desjarlait, right, comforts a teacher as an unidentified woman looks on.
(Molly Miron -- Bemidji Pioneer Via AP)
|
|
Poverty on the Red Lake Reservation stood at 40 percent, the highest of any reservation in Minnesota, according to the 2000 U.S. census, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported last year.
The reservation has seen violence before.
In January 2004, locals raked police buildings with gunfire, prompting a crackdown by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Three years ago, the Justice Department launched a major crackdown on drugs and guns on the reservation, which has a population of about 9,000 people. Officials found evidence of executions, drive-by shootings and ritualistic violence.
Local residents blamed poverty, discrimination, and endless cycles of drug and alcohol abuse. They said gangs often offered the only refuge for aimless youngsters.
As early as 1979, FBI agents had to be sent into the reservation to investigate widespread rioting and looting triggered by internal politics and dissatisfaction with the management style of the BIA. Several dozen Indians stormed the jails, locked up police officers and damaged property.
Red Lake is a closed reservation, meaning it is owned entirely by tribes, in this case the Chippewa Indians.
The shooting left the town reeling.
"You just can't imagine it would happen," said Karla Pankow, manager of a local grocery store, the Trading Post. "There's a lot of hurt people and a lot of devastated people because it's a small community and everybody knows everybody."
Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
