On the neo-Nazi websites where the teenage loner aired his admiration for Adolf Hitler’s notions of ethnic purity, he was known as Todesengel — German for Angel of Death. Late on Monday, in a secluded Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, he played out those dark fantasies.
Jeff Weise (16) shot dead his grandfather, five teenagers, a teacher and two other adults before turning the gun on himself. A dozen others were wounded. It was the deadliest school shooting since April 20 1999, when two students at Colorado’s Columbine High School killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.
The scale of the violence overwhelmed the emergency services in the remote northern community, forcing the evacuation of some of the more seriously wounded.
Red Lake is a particularly close community, one of only two reservations in the United States where all lands are held in common. Located in a secluded area of northern Minnesota, the reservation sits remote and desolate amid vast plains of farmland, on the snow-covered banks of the frozen Lower Red Lake.
But on Tuesday the isolation was abandoned as police officers, federal investigators, counsellors and journalists descended on the reservation in its time of grief.
At Red Lake High School, where the killings took place, Weise was known as a misfit and a loner, the product of a deeply troubled family. His father committed suicide four years ago and his mother was in a nursing home in Minneapolis after suffering brain injuries in a car crash.
Classmates described him as ”weird” and ”anti-social”. Relatives said he was regularly teased. But it was unclear what they knew about Weise’s inner life, which he pursued on a number of neo-Nazi websites, according to the St Paul Pioneer press.
In his postings, Weise showed strong identification with Hitler, and ideas of racial supremacy, calling himself NativeNazi as well as Todesengel. ”I guess I’ve always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations,” said one of his postings last year.
He vented his impatience with those who did not share his fascination with Hitler, singling out his teachers for rebuke. ”The only ones who oppose my views are the teachers at the high school, and a large portion of the student body who think a Nazi is a Klansman, or a White Supremacist thug.”
On Monday, that frustration came pouring out in a murderous rampage. But he apparently had another score to settle first — with his grandfather, Darryl Lussier, who had served as a police officer on the reservation for three decades.
After shooting dead Lussier and his companion, Weise stole his grandfather’s police-issue bulletproof vest and official car, as well as two handguns and a shotgun, and drove to the red brick school house, FBI officials told a press conference on Tuesday.
Witnesses said he had a grin on his face and waved to fellow students as he walked along the school corridor, emptying his guns. He was challenged by an unarmed security guard, and shot him dead before resuming his rampage. Reggie Graves (14) said teachers herded students from one room to another, trying to move away from the sound of the shooting.
Armed tribal police soon arrived to confront the teenager, forcing his retreat into a classroom where he shot dead five students before turning his gun on himself. According to the Associated Press, three of the students were shot in the head at close range. ”You could hear a girl saying, ‘No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?”’ one student said.
What he was doing remained unclear on Tuesday, with the FBI struggling to piece together a motive for what they believed was a pre-meditated attack.
Some of those clues may eventually be provided by Weise himself, from his involvement with neo-Nazi websites. In a posting last year, he admits that he was questioned by police after a threat against the school in what could have been a possible warning sign.
”By the way, I’m being blamed for a threat on the school I attend because someone said they were going to shoot up the school on 4/20, Hitler’s birthday, and just because I claim being a National Socialist, guess whom they’ve pinned,” he wrote in comments posted at 11.41pm on April 19 last year.
The newspaper went on to report that Weise was subsequently cleared, and quoted him as saying: ”I’m glad for that. I don’t much care for jail, I’ve never been there and I don’t plan on it.” — Â