Tuesday, March 22, 2005

As spring comes, so do the rampages

link

I just can't do these things without irony folks. You'll have to forgive me... but folks, even if the world has peed on you for decades, please lighten up. Please? Let's leave the insanity to war planners, where it belongs...

I do feel bad for the people hurt here, but this stuff has gotten so regular, and the causes are still so ignored, that maybe what I'm writting has good effect if only it gives them a good shock or laugh... yeah, it's not about "Terri" and it's not about "the right" kind of people, but still, read on...


CHICAGO, March 21 - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota on Monday, killing his grandparents, five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard, as well as himself, the authorities said...


Chicago is as close as a Times correspondent will go to Minnesota.

A dozen others were injured in the barrage, which erupted at the 300-student Red Lake High School about 3 p.m., officials said. The grandparents were apparently killed at their home earlier in the day, and the authorities were investigating whether guns used in the shooting were taken from the grandfather, a veteran officer on the tribal police force...

Mr. McCabe did say that "we do have evidence that we believe that the shooter is dead," and that "we believe he was acting alone."

He identified the gunman's grandfather as Daryl Lussier, a longtime officer with the Red Lake Police Department and said Mr. Lussier's guns may have been used in the shootings, The Associated Press reported...


Oh my god- Ralph Wiggum is at risk...




The shooting was the worst at a school since 15 people were killed at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, and came just 18 months after two students were fatally shot at Rocori High School in the central Minnesota town of Cold Spring, 200 miles away...

The Red Lake reservation, about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities and about 120 miles south of Canada, is home to about 5,000 Ojibwa Indians, commonly called Chippewa. The tribe operates three casinos and other tourist attractions on some half-million acres.

Clyde Bellecourt, founder of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement, said he could not "remember anything as tragic as this happening" on a reservation.

"Everyone in the Indian community is feeling really bad right now, whether they're a member of the Red Lake or not, we're all an extended family, we're all related," he said. "Usually this happens in places like Columbine, white schools, always somewhere else. We never hear that in our community."

Mr. Bellecourt and his brother Vernon, another longtime American Indian leader, said that the gunman's grandfather had been on the local police force for perhaps 35 years, and belonged to one of the tribe's most prominent and respected families.

"No one would ever think that that type of violence would visit itself in our communities, it's not part of our culture and our traditions, so we're kind of puzzled by it all," Vernon Bellecourt said.


I just love those quotes. I can see a Times guy, on the phone, calling up his list of "Injun" contacts- and gets AIM, and thereby gets Clyde Bellecourt who responds with the obligatory condescension but gives his brother's contact.

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