Echoes Of Columbine

Eerie parallels are emerging between the deadly shooting rampage at a Minnesota high school and the Columbine school shootings in Colorado.

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.

Authorities are still trying to determine what caused the 16-year-old to go on a 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.

It was the nation's deadliest school shooting since the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, which ended with the deaths of 12 students, a teacher and the two teen gunmen.

Columbine killer Eric Harris had posted threats on a Web site, and he and his partner Dylan Klebold staged their attack on Hitler's birthday.

Authorities were investigating whether Weise, who dressed in black, frequently wore a trenchcoat and wrote stories about zombies, may have posted messages on a neo-Nazi Web site expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler under the nickname "Todesengel" -- German for "Angel of Death."

He says on the postings he got in trouble for talking about shooting up his school. He was assigned to a homebound program due to a history of anti-social behavior.

Relatives told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Weise was often teased by others. They said his father committed suicide four years ago and his mother is living in a Minneapolis nursing home because of brain injuries suffered in a car accident.

Lorene Gurneau, a bus driver for the district who knew Weise and his mother, Joanne, said she often saw the teen, hard to miss at 6-feet 250-pounds, alone on the school grounds.

"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."

Gurneau said she knew the family from when they all lived near each other in Minneapolis in the early 1990s. She said her ex-husband, Joanne and Joanne's husband often used to drink too much.

Kim Desjarlait, Joanne Weise's former sister-in-law, said Weise has lived in a nursing home since suffering brain damage in a March 1999 car accident in Shakopee, a Minneapolis suburb. Desjarlait said Weise was a passenger in a car driven by her cousin, who was killed. Both women had been drinking, Desjarlait said.

Gurneau said Joanne's drinking often caused young Jeff to be left home alone.

The Red Lake killings began at the home of Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 58, a tribal police officer who was shot to death with a .22-caliber gun, according to the FBI's Michael Tabman. Also killed was Lussier's companion, Michelle Sigana.

Weise then drove his grandfather's squad car to the school, where he gunned down security guard Derrick Brun, 28, at the door and spent about 10 minutes inside, targeting people at random, authorities said.

Hearing the shots, students 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.

Many students saw their friends shot, or heard gunshots and screams as Weise made his way through the halls, firing multiple shots, aiming for his classmates' heads. Some students said they saw dead bodies in the hall, and trails of blood as they evacuated the school.

Brian Rohrbaugh, whose son Daniel was killed at Columbine, speculates that warning signs were missed at Red Lake.

"I suspect we'll learn that just like every other school shooting there was advance warning, a lot of information, and it wasn't acted upon. If that's not the case this will be unique in school shootings," he said.

The Red Lake Reservation is home to one of the nation's poorest tribes. Nearly 40 percent of families live in poverty. School test scores usually are chronically low. According to the 2000 census, 5,162 people lived on the reservation, and all but 91 were Indians.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says it has placed an agent nearby to combat the rampant abuse of cocaine, methamphetamine and OxyContin.

With their school still a crime scene, officials at Weise's high school reached out to students.

"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 in a broadcast interview. "Please, let us help you."

The school remained closed Wednesday, as Dunshee and others assessed what kind of counseling the students in this tight-knit community would need. Teachers and staff were called to a morning meeting at the nearby elementary school.

The Red Lake Band of Chippewa has severely limited access to journalists in town, asserting sovereignty on a closed reservation, warning that venturing off the main road through town is trespassing and risks arrest. Because of that, reporters on Wednesday weren't able to approach the school, which is set back from the main road.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty expressed his condolences for the families of the victims and said it appeared the school had "very rigorous security."

"It looks like you had a very disturbed individual who was able to overcome a lot of precautions to do a lot of damage," the governor said.

School violence experts have said the country improved campus safety after the Columbine shootings, most notably by restricting access to schools, increasing the number of school police officers, developing emergency plans and adding phones and radios in schools.

School safety specialists also said the Columbine killings shed light on a critical goal: changing school culture. That means monitoring warning signs of violence and stemming bullying.

CBS News Correspondent Mika Brzezinski spoke with Dr. William Pollack of Harvard Medical School to talk about whether warning signs can be used to predict when deviant behavior can become deadly.

"If we said the typical school shooter was an adolescent who wore black, was a male, listened to weird music, and got upset all the time, that would be 90 percent of all male adolescents," Pollack said. "It's just not useful."

He said that while a clear stereotype of a school shooter does not, and cannot, exist, there are ways to recognize when a teenager is becoming a threat.

"If more people around America understood these key warning signals and helped the boys and girls who show them, we'd not only prevent shootings, we'd prevent suicides, we'd diminish depression, we'd enhance mental health of adolescents in the United States," Pollack told Brzezinski.