RED LAKE, Minnesota - Grieving parents and friends gathered Tuesday outside a Red Lake school after a rampage by a self-styled teenage "Angel of Death" who killed nine people before shooting himself.
Police sealed streets around the Red Lake High School in the isolated Indian reservation town in Minnesota, allowing only family and friends of pupils to wait outside.
Tearful adults and children embraced each other, stunned by the impact of the worst US school killings since the Columbine massacre in 1999.
Witnesses and officials named the gunman as Jeff Weise, 15, a loner who had expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and had used the names "Todesengel" -- German for "Angel of Death" -- and "NativeNazi" when signing on to extreme right-wing Internet sites, St. Paul's Pioneer Press newspaper reported.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Michael Pabman told reporters Weise killed his grandfather, a local police sergeant, with a .22-caliber weapon. He also killed his grandfather's female companion.
"Then, we believe, he took the police bulletproof vest and gun belt of his grandfather, donned those, got into the police vehicle his grandfather had, and drove to the school, driving up right to the door."
Pabman said that Weise was "confronted by an unarmed security guard" whom he then shot dead before walking down the hall of Red Lake High School, where he opened fire on a teacher and some students.
"This is without a doubt the darkest hour in the history of our tribe," said Floyd Jourdain, leader of the Red Lake tribe, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of the Canadian border.
Weise carried at least a shotgun and a handgun into the school, according to witnesses and authorities.
One student, Sondra Hegstrom, told a local Bemidji, Minnesota newspaper, The Pioneer, she heard the shooting from an adjoining classroom.
"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 that's 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.
Students and teachers hid inside classrooms and used their cell phones to alert police.
Teacher Diane Schwanz said the teenager tried to break through the door to her classroom. "I just got on the floor and called the cops. I was still just half-believing it," she told The Pioneer.
"No one would ever think that that type of violence would visit itself in our communities," she added.
"Apparently, he walked down the hallway shooting and then he entered a classroom. He shot several students and a teacher, then himself," Roman Stately of Red Lake Fire Department told reporters.
He said the bodies of the boy's grandfather and his partner were found one hour after the school shooting.
The gunman was a quiet loner who was often teased and who had a disturbed background.
"I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations," Weise wrote last year in an online forum frequented by neo-Nazis. He wore a dark trench coat to school every day.
A school worker described Weise as "a mixed-up kid who seemed lost in life."
Relatives said that his father committed suicide four years ago and that his mother was in a nursing home because of brain injuries following an auto accident.
The killing spree was the deadliest at a US school since the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Two teenagers killed 13 people and wounded 23 others before shooting themselves.
The White House said President George W. Bush had been kept informed of events in Red Lake.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Red Lake High School has some 300 students, according to its website. There are about 5,000 people -- mainly native Americans -- in Red Lake.

03/22/2005 20:38 GMT