Ten killed in US shooting rampage

WASHINGTON: A teenage student went on a shooting rampage at an Indian reservation, gunning down nine people before committing suicide in the worst US school massacre since Columbine in 1999, police and local media said Tuesday.

One student, Sondra Hegstrom, told the local newspaper, The Pioneer, that she heard the carnage in the next door class at the school in the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota, 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of the Canadian border.

“You could hear a girl saying, ‘No, Jeff. Quit! Quit! Leave me alone. Why are you doing this? Boom, boom, boom, and then no more screaming,” she said.

“I looked him in the eye and ran in a room and thats when I hid,” she said. “I called 911 from a cell phone and they said, ‘Just sit there and wait until the cops come’.” The newspaper’s editor quoted a student at Red Lake High School as saying the killer pointed his gun at a boy, changed his mind, smiled, waved and shot somebody else.

“This is without a doubt the darkest hour in the history of our tribe, I just want to again send our heartfelt wishes out to the families,” said the reservation’s tribal leader, Floyd Jourdain. The shooting occurred at 3:00 pm (21:00 GMT) Monday. afp

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