Portrait emerges of youth who did not seem violent

On March 21, he left the house. He left no note.

What he did that day is how most remember Jeffrey Weise - a 16-year-old who gunned down classmates, school officials and relatives before killing himself in the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

More than three months later, his family doesn't understand what unleashed the rampage that took 10 lives, including his own. Was it antidepressants? Was he bullied too much?

Those closest to Weise remember an intelligent, inquisitive, artistic teenager with plans. He wanted to open a video store, add on to his grandmother's house, travel overseas and produce movies.

They didn't recognize the person depicted in news reports after the shooting.

"I feel that wasn't the Jeffrey I know," said Shawna Lussier, his aunt. "I never held it against him. People just look at me crazy because I defended him and he killed my dad… We know how much Jeffrey loved my dad and how much my dad loved Jeffrey."

Daryl "Dash" Lussier Sr. was one of the first people killed March 21.

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Jeffrey Weise fought his depression with Prozac. But those who knew him say he typically didn't fight others - including those who teased him - at Red Lake High School, despite carrying nearly 300 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame,

"He didn't give us no grief or nothing," said Ben Young Bear, a former Red Lake High School security guard.

Weise's primary defense was to stay away, even though he had a few friends and confidants at school, including counselor Ron Kingbird.

"Ron would usually call me and let me know Jeffrey was having a hard day," Shelda Lussier said.

Weise lived with Lussier, his grandmother.

"That's when I found out he was being ridiculed. He got to the point he was missing more school than he was attending."

His aunt Shawna would pick him up from school and ask him what was going on.

Oh, nothing, he'd tell her. Just having a bad day.

"'If kids are saying things to you, Jeff, just ignore them,'" she'd say. "I always tried to tell him, 'Geez, it must take a lot for them to take time out of their day to think of something to say to you. You must really be special.' "

Weise rarely told his grandmother what was happening, but others told her he was ridiculed and teased.

"Kids would always say stuff about his mom," the grandmother said. "She couldn't do anything for a long time. She's just now getting back to be herself. They'd say things to him about not having a mother, about not having a dad."

It wasn't always that way.

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Jeffrey James Weise's first permanent caretaker was Daryl "Baby Dash" Lussier Jr. When the boy was 3 months old, his mother, Joanne Weise, gave him to the Lussiers to raise here in northern Minnesota. She stayed in the Twin Cities.

The boy, his father and grandparents, Shelda and Daryl Sr., lived together. The father and baby shared a bedroom.

The mother returned to claim him three years later. For the next seven years, they lived in the Twin Cities. And when he was about 8, Joanne married Timothy "Troy" Desjarlait.

Those were happier days, Joanne's mother, Rita Weise, said recently at her home on the Red Lake reservation.

Those times didn't last. Baby Dash killed himself when he was 32. Two years later, in 1998, Jeffrey's mother nearly died in an alcohol-related car crash. When she could no longer care for her kids, the Desjarlait family said they would keep Jeffrey's younger siblings, but not Jeffrey.

Joanne's husband divorced her after the accident. She lived in care centers in the Twin Cities, her mother's home and a Red Lake nursing home before returning to the city for more extensive care.

Joanne Weise moved to an assisted-living center two years ago. She walks with a cane, goes to church, has regained her speech and works part time, her mother said.

When Joanne returned to the Twin Cities, Jeffrey chose to live with the Lussiers at Red Lake, insisting on the room he once shared with his father.

He expressed himself through writing, or pen and ink.

When FBI agents arrived after the shootings, they seized all of his possessions, including 30 drawing tablets and three computer hard drives.

Weise used the Internet frequently, and he wrote the following on a Nazi Web site:

You encounter a lot of hostility when you claim to be a National Socialist, but because of my size and appearance people don't give me as much trouble as they would if I looked weak. I don't try to hide what I am from anyone, if they're going to start something over it then fine. I'm not backing down; nor am I hiding. I try not to be aggressive in most situations. I'll use force if I have to, but I'm not about to go out and pick a fight. I'm mostly defensive; I'll defend myself if someone tries something, but other than that I'm a peaceful person.

He also made and posted on the Internet an animated video clip depicting a bloody shootout.

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On a recent sunny afternoon, Rita Weise sat at a picnic table at her home with a pile of photos of her favorite grandson.

"He was a regular little boy," she said. "He wasn't violent. He wasn't mean… When you told him something, he always asked 'how' or 'why?'"

Now she's asking the questions.

"I'd like some answers from how he came to this, to what happened," she said, pointing to his smiling photos.

Inside her house, a refrigerator magnet - a faded, green paper Christmas wreath - holds a photo of Jeffrey in kindergarten. Many of his other childhood photos are gone now, in the hands of strangers.

The grandmother holds tight to the few tangible memories that remain. Like the guest book from the estimated 100 people who attended his funeral and wake. Teenagers left messages in the book. "Luv u! Miss you!" "I love you Jeff!"

Inside her kitchen, Rita sat next to the chair her grandson used when he visited. He usually wore jeans and T-shirts, not the gothic dress and makeup and body piercings reported after the shootings.

He did spend several months with his hair spiked into horns. And he liked black clothes, but that wasn't unusual. "There's a lot of people who dress in black at that school," said his cousin Vanessa.

"He didn't have on any eyeliner. He didn't have any spiked hair. He just had on a black leather coat," Rita said. "He walked in the door. I said, 'Jeffrey, boy, do you ever look like your dad.'"

The coat was a gift from his other grandmother, Shelda, who gave it to him when he was 14.

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About three years ago, Jeffrey stopped by Rita and James Weise's house. His grandfather asked him about school.

It's not good, the teen said. I don't go to the real classes. I go to the alternative school. I'm a year behind.

I can't be in regular school because kids are mean to me. They punch me. They trip me.

The boy put his head down, Rita recalled. It was the first time she had heard about trouble at school. She heard more after the shootings. At least five different people, including tribal employees, school officials and community members, told her they knew her grandson was picked on excessively.

My god, they were even pulling clumps of hair out of his head, someone told her.

And this: Rita, I don't want to tell you this… about five kids ran up to him and punched him… the kids laughed and ran away.

"There's rumors galore out there," said Mary Kay Klein, attorney for the Red Lake School District. "How many of them are actually truthful, who knows? But I can tell you: Jeff Weise's size is not a secret. He was a big kid. Students did not bully him, but then again, that's based on my knowledge. I wasn't in school with him every day."

Mary Sumner of Red Lake recalled the half-dozen times she saw kids hitting Jeffrey Weise outside of the middle school when she picked up a grandchild.

"I thought it was sad he would stand there and take it."

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He took it out on himself.

About 17 months before the shootings, Jeffrey pulled the eraser from a pencil and scraped the metal edge into his arms.

"I just hugged him and said, 'Jeffrey, don't hurt yourself,'" Shawna Lussier said.

Doctors prescribed 20 milligrams of Prozac per day.

Jeffrey told his family he wasn't trying to hurt himself; he was just trying to release inner pain. A follow-up visit with an Indian Health Service physician at the Red Lake Hospital led to a 20-milligram-per-day increase.

By February 2005, Jeffrey had been taking the antidepressant for about 17 months. He was attending school, taking 40 milligrams a day, when a teacher reprimanded him. Family members don't remember why. He was confined to a cubicle in the suspension room when he again sliced into his arms with a pencil's metal edge, Shawna Lussier said.

Mental health workers at the reservation hospital told his family he was not suicidal, that his cuts were part of a fad seen in New York, his aunt and grandmother said.

Constance James, director of the Indian Health Service's Red Lake Service Unit, said patient confidentiality rules prevented her from commenting.

After he cut himself in school, an Indian Health Service doctor increased Jeffrey's Prozac to 60 milligrams per day, Shelda Lussier said.

By then, nearly every local organization knew Jeffrey Weise.

"We had every single resource you could have on the reservation," said his aunt Shawna. "We had the Indian Health Service. We had mental health. We had the police department. We had social services. We had the school involved."

Jeffrey was acting differently. He saw a bird in the house no one else saw. He moved his fingertips together in repetitive motions. He heard noises they didn't. He would ask: "What?"

"And we'd say, 'We didn't say anything,'" Shawna Lussier said.

"If people around him noticed his personality changed when his dosage increased, that he was more agitated, restless, that he had trouble sitting still, those kinds of things, then, that would suggest that Prozac might have had something to do with it," said Dr. Leslie Lundt, a psychiatrist and author in Boise, Idaho.

A small percentage of people suffer adverse effects from antidepressants, she said. Typically, suicidal or homicidal reactions would appear shortly after the medication was taken, she said. And a 60-milligram dose is fairly high but "not outrageous," she said.

"The most impressive detail in terms of a psychological autopsy is the fact that his father committed suicide," Lundt said. "That increases your risk, no matter who you are, tremendously."

His mother's alcohol abuse - and his frequent moving - complicated his situation, she added.

"A family history of alcoholism and suicide are two of the worst things that can happen to you in terms of your future behavior… To me, that's more impressive than whether or not he was on Prozac or what dose he was on."

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Rita Weise was getting ready to drive the 30 miles to Bemidji to look for office furniture. She had her police scanner on, as did many reservation residents that Monday.

A shooting was taking place at the Red Lake High School.

Minutes later, she heard the dispatcher: Jeff Weise is the shooter.

She drove to a relative's house.

Did you hear about the shootings at the school, her niece asked. Jeffrey shot himself. Jeffrey's dead.

"'He's dead?' I kept asking her. 'Are you sure? Are you sure?'"

At the school, Rita asked some of her cousins if they knew anything.

He's dead, they told her. He committed suicide.

She saw Vanessa outside the school.

"She was screaming," Rita said.

Is Jeffrey OK?

A police officer made everyone move away from the school. A teacher spoke to Rita: I always knew he was a goddamn psycho.

"I looked at her and said, 'That's my grandson you're talking about.'"

Jeff Weise? He was such a nice kid.

Then two school employees approached her.

Rita, he was a good kid, she remembered one of them saying.

He was just bullied too much.

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When Shawna Lussier got to the school, she saw a police cruiser.

"I thought my dad showed up," she said. "He's the first one on the scene all the time, whether he's on duty or not."

But the last time anyone had seen Daryl "Dash" Lussier Sr. was three hours earlier, around noon, when Weise's cousin Vanessa saw him sitting on the couch at home, watching TV and eating a sandwich.

"It was a normal day," she said. "I couldn't picture nothing wrong until I heard gunshots in the school."

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Rita Weise got home about two hours after the shootings to a ringing phone. It was her daughter, Joanne. She had just seen a Twin Cities news report about the shooting.

For weeks, she called her mother every day. Is my son really dead?

He's dead, they told her. He had shot to death his grandfather and the man's companion. Then he went to Red Lake High and killed five students, an unarmed security guard and a teacher. Finally, he killed himself. Ten people were dead.

Jodi Rave covers Native issues for Lee Enterprises. Reach her at (800) 366-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net.