BEMIDJI (USA), March 22: A high school student shot dead nine people and then killed himself on Monday at Minnesota’s Red Lake Indian Reservation in the worst school shooting since the 1999 Columbine massacre, authorities said. Among the dead at Red Lake High School were a male security guard, a female teacher, and at least six students including the gunman, the FBI said. At least a dozen others were wounded in the carnage. Before arriving at the school, the gunman shot dead his grandfather, identified as veteran tribal police officer Daryl “Dash” Lussier, and Lussier’s girlfriend at their home in Red Lake village. “We believe the shooter was acting alone,” FBI agent Paul McCabe said, adding the dead at the school were all in one room.

One victim was identified by a friend as teacher Neva Rogers, 62, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper reported.

The gunman fired at doors of classrooms barricaded by terrified students and teachers, witnesses said.

“He came into the school and the first person he shot was the security officer at the door,” said Molly Miron, editor of the Bemidji Pioneer newspaper. “One of the students told me he pointed his gun at a boy and then changed his mind, smiled, waved at him, and shot somebody else.”

The authorities did not release the gunman’s name. The FBI described him as a juvenile, but did not specify his age.

Police, alerted to the massacre when students used cell phones to call for help, said they exchanged gunfire with the gunman who ducked into a classroom and shot himself.

Witnesses said he was armed with a shotgun or rifle and at least one handgun.

The gunman’s motive was not immediately known, the FBI said, though a classmate told a local television station that he had spoken a year ago of wanting to “shoot up the school.”

It was the deadliest U.S. school shooting since the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in which 14 students — including the two killers — and a teacher died.

OJIBWA TRIBE: In 2002 a gunman in Erfurt, Germany, killed 13 teachers, two students and a policeman at the Gutenberg secondary school before killing himself.

The Minnesota reservation, 100kms south of the Canadian border, is controlled by the Ojibwa tribe, commonly known as the Chippewa, which says it has roughly 10,000 members, about half of whom live on the reservation.—Reuters