Red Lake, Minnesota (AP/Wires)

A 17-year-old student went on a shooting spree March 21, shooting his

grandfather and a woman at their Red Lake home and then seven people at

his high school on the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation.

The gunman himself was found shot to death in the same room as the

others after exchanging gunshots with tribal police in the school,

authorities said.

Students pleaded with the gunman to stop shooting as he unloaded

his gun, shooting at least 21 people at the school.

It was the nation's worst school shooting since the Columbine

massacre in 1999.

Eight people died in the mid-afternoon shooting at Red Lake High

School in far northern Minnesota, including five students and the shooter.

Also killed were a teacher and a security guard, FBI spokesman Paul McCabe

said at a news conference in Minneapolis.

The sophmore gunman was identified by other tribal members as Jeff

Wiese, 17.

Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Tribal Council, called

the tragedy "the darkest day in the history of our tribe."

"There's not a soul that will go untouched by the tragic loss that

we've experienced here," he said the day after the shootings.

Red Lake Fire Director Roman Stately 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.

Relatives said Wiese was a towering loner who wore black all the

time and was teased by other kids. Wiese's father committed suicide four

years ago, relatives said, and his mother lives in a nursing home in

Minneapolis after sustaining brain injuries in a car accident.

The shootings began in the early afternoon when Wiese killed his

grandfather, Daryl "Dash" Lussier, 58, and a woman at their home in Red

Lake and then took his grandfather's police weapons.

About 3 p.m. Wiese drove a pickup truck to the high school, rammed

the truck into the school and shot a security guard to death, Wiese's

relatives said.

McCabe said all eight people killed at the school were shot near or

in a single classroom.

Police, alerted to the massacre when students used cell phones to

call for help, said they exchanged gunfire with the gunman, who ducked into

a classroom and shot himself.

Witnesses said he was armed with a shotgun or rifle and at least

one handgun.

Fourteen to 15 other students were injured, McCabe said.

The school was evacuated after the shootings and locked down for

investigation, McCabe said.

Stately, the fire chief, told KARE-TV that the shooter had two

handguns and a shotgun.

"After he shot a security guard, he walked into a classroom where

he shot a teacher and more students," Stately said.

Students gave a terrifying account of the attack.

"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me

alone. What are you doing?'" said one student, Sondra Hegstrom, using the

name of the suspected shooter.

In an interview with The Pioneer of Bemidji, Hegstrom described the

gunman grinning and waving at a student his gun was pointed at, then

swiveling the gun to shoot someone else.

"I looked him in the eye and ran in the room, and that's when I

hid," Hegstrom said.

Ashley Morrison, another student, took refuge in a 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.

A teacher in that room, Diane Schwanz, said, "I just got down on

the floor and (said), 'Kids, down on the ground, under the benches!'" She

said she called police on her cell phone.

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 shooter fired twice. The first bullet struck a clock on the

wall behind Cody, who ducked. The second bullet hit him in the hip, she

said.

Reggie Graves said he was watching a movie about Shakespeare in

class when he heard the gunman blast his way past the metal detector at the

school's entrance, killing a guard.

Then, in a nearby classroom, he heard the gunman say something to

his friend Ryan. "He asked Ryan if he believed in God," Graves said. "And

then he shot him."

The Red Lake Independent School District is near the tribal

headquarters of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. Students were evacuated to a

drug rehabilitation building that is part of the nearby tribal complex

"You read about it in the papers," Sondra Hegstrom said. "It

happens at other places, but not at our school. I thought our school was

safe."

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.

Weise identified himself in Internet site postings as "Todesengel,"

German for "angel of death" and "NativeNazi," the St. Paul Pioneer Press

reported.

He also claimed to have been questioned by police in 2004 about an

alleged plot to shoot up the school on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's

birthday, but said he had nothing to do with that, the report said.

"I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and

his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations," the newspaper

quoted Weise as saying in one forum used by neo-Nazis.

Weise had been placed in the school's Homebound program for some

violation of policy, said school board member Kathryn Beaulieu. Students in

that program stay at home and are tutored by a traveling teacher. Beaulieu

said she didn't know what Weise's violation was, and wouldn't be allowed to

reveal it if she did.

The reservation is about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities. It is

home to the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and has an enrollment of about 9,500

members.

Approximately 5,100 people live on the reservation, which

encompasses 825,000 acres of land in northern Minnesota.

The high school, in the city of Red Lake, has 330 students. There

are about 1,500 students in the tribal school district's nine schools.

Four main communities make up the reservation: Red Lake, location

of the tribal headquarters; Redby; Ponemah; and Little Rock.

Bob Thunder, a Metropolitan Transit police officer who grew up on

the Red Lake Reservation, said Lussier "worked as an officer for more than

30 years, and he believed in what he was doing. I saw him at the recent

(tribal chief) inauguration and asked him when he was going to retire. He

told me, 'soon.'"

Some of the wounded were taken to North Country Regional Hospital

in Bemidji and others to MeritCare Hospital in Fargo, N.D.

On The Net:

Red Lake High School: www.paulbunyan.net/rlschools/hs.htm

Red Lake Nation: http://www.redlakenation.org/