Students, teachers coping with shooting

RED LAKE, Minn. -- Teachers met Wednesday to work out ways of helping young survivors of the nation's worst school shooting in six years as outsiders streamed in to help the tight-knit community cope with the tragedy.\n"Kids, if you're out there listening, please, we'll be there for you. Come back to school, and we'll get through this together," Red Lake High School Principal Chris Dunshee told KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul. "Please, let us help you."\nThe school remained closed Wednesday, as Dunshee and others assessed what kind of counseling the students would need. Teachers and staff were called to a morning meeting at the nearby elementary school on the Red Lake Reservation.\nReporters weren't able to approach the school, which is set back from the main road, because the Red Lake Band of Chippewa sharply restricted their access, warning that venturing off the main road through town would be trespassing and threatening arrests.\nTribal chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. told WCCO-AM of Minneapolis that the meeting at the elementary school was intended to produce a strategy to help families and victims.\n"We're just coordinating our efforts with our community professionals and spiritual elders, and then also we have people who are coming here to assist the community today," Jourdain said.\nAuthorities were still trying to determine why 16-year-old Jeff Weise went on the shooting rampage that began at his grandfather's house and ended at Red Lake High School. Nine people were killed and seven were wounded before the gunman apparently shot himself.\nMany students saw their friends shot or heard gunshots and screams. Some students said they saw dead bodies in the hall and trails of blood when they evacuated the school.\n"First and foremost, we've got to be focused on getting our kids through this," Dunshee told The Associated Press. "They're good kids. They don't deserve this."\nDunshee said many of his colleagues have offered support and encouragement, including Scott Staska, the superintendent of the Cold Spring school district where two students were killed in September 2003. A 15-year-old student was charged in the slayings and is awaiting trial.\nDunshee said Staska told him "we belong to a rather exclusive and undesirable club now -- and we can get through it." Staska recommended Dunshee investigate grants that may be available to schools affected by such incidents.\nPaul Fleckenstein, a mental health leader with the American Red Cross, said the organization is out in the community asking questions, learning about American Indian traditions and assessing what the families need.\n"We are being particularly sensitive to the needs and the traditions of the community," Fleckenstein said.\nIt was the nation's deadliest school shooting since the Columbine High School rampage in Colorado in April 1999, which ended in the deaths of 12 students, a teacher and the two teen gunmen.\nThe Red Lake killings began at the home of Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 58, a tribal police officer who was killed with a .22-caliber gun, according to the FBI's Michael Tabman. Also killed was Lussier's companion, Michelle Sigana, 32.\nWeise then drove his grandfather's police car to the school, where he gunned down unarmed security guard Derrick Brun, 28, at the door and spent about 10 minutes inside, targeting people at random, authorities said.\nStudents and adults barricaded themselves into offices and classrooms and crouched under desks. A teacher and five students were shot to death. Two 15-year-olds remained in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the face.\nWeise, hard to miss at 6 feet, 250 pounds, often was seen alone on the school grounds, said Lorene Gurneau, a bus driver for the district who knew Weise and his mother, Joanne Weise.\n"I used to see him standing near the fence looking out, but not really looking out at anything," she said. "I never saw anyone stop and talk to him"