Here are two more articles debating the reasons behind the lack of news coverage on the Red Lake shootings.
Measuring the media coverage against Columbine (Log in Info)
Category: School Violence
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President offers condolences
Bush Offers Condolences for Monday’s School Shooting:
President Bush offered his condolences to the victims of the Red Lake shooting today…
WACO, Texas — President George W. Bush (search) on Friday expressed condolences to the leader of the Minnesota Indian reservation where 10 people died Monday in the second-worst school shooting in U.S. history.
Bush talked to Floyd Jourdain Jr., chairman of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa (search), for five minutes Friday morning, offering his sympathy for the victims of a teen-ager’s shooting rampage and for the entire Red Lake community. He pledged to provide federal assistance, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Of course, nothing the President does is without controversy…
Some American Indians have complained that Bush did not respond publicly to the shooting for four days. Just hours after the shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School that left 15 dead, then-President Bill Clinton publicly expressed his condolences.
I’m a little pissed about it myself, but the American Indians shouldn’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with the American Indian people, but because the federal government has their priorities screwed up right now. They’re more worried about Terry Schiavo than nine dead victims. It’s disheartening at best, pathetic at its worst.
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Dispelling A Myth
Victim recalls shooter’s ‘mean’ look before rampage:
I’ve always heard from the mutants say that if more people tried to be friends with people like Harris and Klebold and now Jeff Weise that they wouldn’t have committed their crimes. I’ve always disputed that belief. Listen to the story of Cody Thunder. He tried to befriend Jeff Weise…
Before that day, Thunder said he had talked to Weise several times, even attempting to befriend him.
“He seemed like a loner, and I just felt like it would be good to go talk to him,” Thunder said.
But Weise “talked about nothing but guns and shooting people,” he said, and the attempt to reach out didn’t result in friendship.
Cody was rewarded with his attempt of friendship by being shot in the hip by Weise. Doctors have decided to leave a bullet lodged in his hip.
To all the mutants who think that the victims deserved what they got, please tell me what Cody Thunder did to deserve being shot.
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Heroes
Slain Minn. School Guard Described as Hero:
A lot has been said today about security guard Derrick Brun. He confronted Jeff Weise unarmed, which allowed novice security guard LeeAnn Grant to get to safety along with some other students before Weise shot and killed Brun…
“I know he bought me time by confronting Jeff, for me to even get that much farther away with the students,” Grant told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “Derrick’s my hero. … He didn’t even look scared. He didn’t look worried. He knew what he was going to do.”
“He looked right at me. I made eye contact with him,” Grant said. The boy quickly found the open door.
“He walked in and fired another shot and I was telling Derrick, ‘Come on, let’s go. Let’s go, Derrick. Run. We need to save these kids, we need to do something.’ And I radioed in ‘There’s a guy coming in the school and he’s shooting and he has a gun.’”
“Derrick just sat there at his desk. … He just kept staring at Jeff. I kept hollering for him to come with me. He wouldn’t come. He just stayed there.”
The noise drew students toward the front doors. Some thought maybe there was a fight, and they wanted to see, Grant said.
“I start yelling at them, ‘Run! There’s a guy with a gun here! Just run!’ And then I took off to try to protect them,” she said.
“I turned back a little bit, and you could see Derrick kind of getting up, going right toward Jeff,” she said. “And then I heard two shots again.”
How many of us could say they would have done the same thing?
But also another name needs to be mentioned, Jeffrey May.
According to his family, May tried protecting two girls by stabbing Weise in the side with a pencil. What did he get for his troubles?…
Weise shot him in the right cheek and the bullet lodged in his neck. The 6-foot-4, 300-pound teen suffered a stroke and can’t move his left side, but he has been able to write notes to his family.
Doctors don’t know if May will recover, but family members said he was breathing on his own, which they called a good sign.
So Jeffrey May may be disabled for life and Derrick Brun is dead, all because of the misplaced hate of a coward.
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More Signs
School Shooter Left Trail Of Clues On The Internet:
According to this article from MTV.com, Jeff Weise left even more clues on the internet…
In December 2003, on a site called the Writer’s Coven, Weise posted a story about a shooting spree that featured a character dressed in black and a teacher with a Hitler-like mustache, according to The New York Times. Like Monday’s shootings, in which Weise shot and killed an unarmed guard at the school (see “FBI: Minnesota Shooter Acted Alone, Chose Victims At Random”), one of the fictional victims was a school security guard, whose throat had been “ripped out, replaced by a bloody mass of torn tissue.” He also wrote that, “in the distance, somewhere else in the school, the sound of a blood-curdling scream echoed through the hallways.
They also bring up a very valid point that even though Jeff Weise was on the internet, most of the people on his reservation could not afford to be on the internet. Which in turn made it more difficult to prevent this tragedy.
The Smoking Gun has a screenshot of his MSN Profile.
But getting back to the surprisingly informative MTV article, they had this blurb printed at the bottom of the article…
If you ever see a student carrying a weapon or hear talk of plans for violence, you can anonymously call (866) SPEAK-UP toll free and the tip will be forwarded to the proper local authorities.
This number should be put on all articles relating to school violence. As a matter of fact, it will be a permanent fixture on my site sometime tonight.
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Another Sign?
Allegedly, Jeff Weise was a flash animation artist as well and may have had a profile at Newgrounds. If it is him, he made two animations. The first one is called Clown but the second more prophetic one is called Target Practice if, in fact, this was actually him.
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Hard Life but No Excuse
Jeff Weise: A mystery in a life full of hardship:
(Log in Info) More details of Jeff Weise’s life have been divulged…
Gurneau attributes some of Weise’s troubles to his beleaguered life. His father, Daryl Lussier Jr., known to relatives as “Baby Dash,” committed suicide in July 1997 following a police standoff that lasted for more than a day, Gurneau said. Not even Lussier’s father, Red Lake officer Daryl Lussier, could negotiate a peaceful ending. The senior Lussier was one of Weise’s first victims Monday.
Years later, Joanne Weise suffered brain damage in a car accident after she and a friend had been drinking, Gurneau said.
It explains a lot but doesn’t excuse anything. I couldn’t care less if he had red-hot pokers shoved up his ass on a repeated basis. It doesn’t matter how hard your life was, it doesn’t give you an excuse to kill 9 innocent people.
But the “blame society” mindset that some people have will allow them to rationalize the situation by blaming jocks, or bullies, or the school when ultimately we are all responsible for our own actions. Unfortunately, the number of people who see it that way is dwindling.
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Nazis: No Apologies
Then again, when do they ever?
Minn. shooter was drawn to Nazism:
According to this article from the Boston Globe, the Nazi website that Jeff Weise frequented has issued a statement showing no remorse over the Red Lake shooting whatsoever…
As the 5,162 residents of Red Lake Reservation struggled to make sense of the violence, the organizers of a neo-Nazi website that Weise frequented expressed no remorse for the killings. The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party, which operates the site where Weise had posted 34 messages, described Weise as ”clearly highly intelligent and contemplative, especially for one so young.”
The site quoted Weise as being disillusioned with a ”raceless” society. Weise, the website’s administrators said, had written: ”The Natives you’ve known to be sympathetic to the cause are probably ones who’ve experienced firsthand what kinds of problems cultural and race-mixing can cause. As a result of cultural dominance and interracial mixing, there are barely any full-blooded Natives left.”
The neo-Nazi organization, reacting to the shootings on its website, said it ”refused to wring hands over a ‘tragedy.’ ” Instead, the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party said, ”such events are to be expected when thinking people are crammed into an unthinking, irrational modern society.” The organization advocates racial separation.
Then again, what would you expect from a group that killed millions in the name of “racial purity”? Ladies and gentlemen, straight from Hitler’s ass, I give you the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party.
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Mutant See. Mutant Do.
This is what leads me to believe that Jeff Weise was a Harris and Klebold worshiping mutant…
Gunmen at both schools had been placed in disciplinary programs. They smiled as they shot their classmates. Witnesses at both schools recounted the gunmen asking victims if they believed in God, and shooting them after they said yes.
The Minnesota shooter, Jeff Weise, was a troubled adolescent, outsider at school, and extrovert in cyberspace, with a fascination for Adolf Hitler and a penchant for darkness — from his clothes to his imagination.
The media has it wrong. It’s not coincidence, it’s emulation. Jeff Weise asked one of his victims if he believed in God before shooting him. Allegedly, Eric Harris asked Cassie Bernall if she believed in God before shooting her, even though that claim is in dispute. Why else would Jeff Weise ask one of his victims that?
Well, now he can imitate his heroes in hell.