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[US News] Jeff Weise, the 16-year-old gunman
who killed nine people last week in Red Lake, Minn., had been
planning the attack at his high school with a friend for more than a
year.
According to sources briefed about the police
investigation, Internet instant messages and e-mails have been
found, that had been sent between Mr. Weise and Louis Jourdain, the
16-year-old son of the Red Lake Reservation's tribal chairman, that
detail the plot.
Evidence unearthed since the March 21
shooting also suggests the pair had done a walk-through of the
small, brick Red Lake High School in preparation for the rampage,
one of the sources said.
On Sunday, Louis Jourdain was arrested, and it is
being reported by Minnesota news media that he is charged with
conspiracy to commit murder. His father, Floyd, released a statement
saying his son is innocent of involvement in the second-worst
school-shooting in U.S. history.
Because the suspect is a juvenile, U.S. federal prosecutors
will not disclose any information about the case, including the
identity of the accused.
Last week, police were
confident that Mr. Weise, who had been described by many of his
classmates as a depressed loner who idolized Hitler, had acted alone
when he shot five students, an English teacher and a school security
guard before turning the gun on himself.
Earlier that day,
he had killed his 58-year-old grandfather, who was a retired tribal
police officer, and his grandfather's girlfriend.
But in the
search for clues, police have been combing through Mr. Weise's
computer and the computers of other teenagers on the reservation.
Mr. Weise's dark side has been
revealed in his e-mails and public postings he made on the Internet.
One of these is a website user profile, where he listed his
hobbies and interests as "Planning. Waiting. Hating."
His
favourite things, he wrote for the profile, were "times when
maddened psychopaths briefly open the gates to hell, and let chaos
flood through."
According to several Red Lake residents,
police also interviewed at least four other reservation teenagers,
but no one else has been held or arrested.
About 5,000
people live in the isolated, northern Minnesota community.
Meanwhile, an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press
yesterday reveals new details about the shootings inside the school.
The e-mail, which was written by a deputy sheriff who had
been given a tour of the crime scene by an agent of the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation, states that after a gun battle erupted
between the police and Mr. Weise, a tribal officer shot the teenager
in the hip and leg.
Mr. Weise then killed himself with the shotgun he
carried.
"The entire school was covered with blood. . . .
"There were bullet holes everywhere," Polk County Deputy
Sheriff James Goss wrote in the e-mail message.
Deputy
Sheriff Goss confirmed he wrote the e-mail but refused further
comment. (Agencies)
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