Ten Dead in Us School Shooting

Residents of a Native American reservation were in shock today after a teenager shot his way through his family and school, leaving 10 people dead, including himself.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named the suspect as Jeff Weise, 17, a student or former student at the local high school on the Red Lake Indian reservation in remote northern Minnesota. Pat Mills, director of Red Lake's public safety department, said officers were not looking for any other suspects.

It was the worst school shooting in the US since 15 people died in the Columbine massacre in 1999.

It emerged today that someone identifying themselves as Weise had posted messages to a rightwing extremist website and claimed to be a Nazi.

Overnight, police, the FBI and tribal authorities began piecing together details of the shooting. Investigators suspected the teenager had taken the weapons from his grandfather, Daryl Lussier, a long-serving police officer on the reservation. Mr Lussier and a woman - variously identified as Mr Lussier's girlfriend or Weise's grandmother - were shot in their home and died later.

Reports suggested that Weise shot dead Red Lake high school's security guard, Derrick Brun, 28, to gain access to the school. He then wandered the corridors shooting before entering a classroom and firing at students and a teacher. One student described the gunman grinning and waving at a student his weapon was pointed at, then swivelling to shoot someone else.

Five students and one teacher - identified as Neva Rogers, 62 - died in the attack.

All of the dead students were found in one room. Paul McCabe, a special agent for the FBI in Minneapolis, said the boy believed to be the gunman was also found dead in there. He said it was too early to speculate on a motive.

Reggie Graves, a student at Red Lake high school, said he was watching a film about Shakespeare in his classroom yesterday when he heard the gunman blast his way past the metal detector at the school's entrance, killing Mr Brun.

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."

Between 12 and 15 other students were injured, and tribal chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr said he feared the death toll could rise. He said the shootings marked "one of the darkest and most painful occurrences in the history of our tribe".

Mr McCabe said that at some point, the gunman had exchanged fire with Red Lake police in a corridor, before retreating to a classroom where he was believed to have shot himself.

It is possible that Weise was investigated last year in connection with a shooting threat to the school. Over a five-month period between March and August 2004, someone identifying himself as Weise posted numerous messages on a talkboard hosted by Nazi.org, the website of the Libertarian National Socialist Green party. The party promotes a Nazi philosophy of racial purity.

On April 19 2004 he posted to the talkboard: "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, Hitlers [sic] birthday, and just because I claim being a National Socialist, guess whom they've pinned?"

Today the party's site administrator said: "We knew [Weise] briefly through 34 posts he made on the forum. He expressed himself well and was clearly highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young."

Relatives told the St Paul Pioneer Press that Weise was a loner who usually wore black and was teased by other kids. Relatives told the newspaper his father committed suicide four years ago, and that his mother was living in a Minneapolis nursing home because she suffered brain injuries in a car accident.

Student Sondra Hegstrom, 17, told the Star Tribune she heard "a big bang" and then another before a fellow student came into her classroom yelling: "He has a gun, he has a gun!" She told the paper that a hall monitor locked the classroom door, a fire alarm went off and nine terrified students and a teacher huddled in the darkened classroom. Ms Hegstrom said she thought of death and worried about who would care for her five-month-old baby.

They heard gunshots from the classroom next door, Ms Hegstrom said.

"You could hear a girl saying, 'No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?" Ms Hegstrom told the Bemidji Pioneer newspaper.

Ms Hegstrom described Weise as a quiet boy who was into goth culture, listened to heavy metal music, wore "a big old black trench coat" and "talked about death all the time".

Another student, Justin Jourdain, told the Star Tribune that, after the shootings, he looked inside a classroom where Ojibwe cultural studies were taught. He said the room was covered in blood and broken glass.

Students and a teacher, Diane Schwanz, said the gunman tried to break down a door to get into her classroom.

"I just got on the floor and called the cops," Ms Schwanz told the Pioneer. "I was still just half-believing it."

Ashley Morrison, another student, had taken refuge in Ms Schwanz's classroom. With the shooter banging on the door, she called her mother on her mobile 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, according to the newspaper.

Martha Thunder's son Cody, 15, 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," Ms Thunder said, standing outside the hospital in Bemidji.

Authorities closed roads to the reservation while they investigated the shootings.

The Red Lake nation of Chippewa Indians has been plagued by poverty. A report from the Minnesota department of education said four in five of the 300 students at Red Lake high school met government poverty standards. The 2004 report said all students at the school were Native American.