‘It’s something you never get over’: Red Lake grieves on 20th anniversary of school shooting

RED LAKE, MINN. - When Missy Dodds hugs someone, she holds them long and hard and doesn’t let go.

“It’s almost like my heart talks to their heart,” she said. “They know my worst day. They were there. I don’t even have to say anything.”

The former Red Lake High School teacher on Friday embraced first responders and her students — who were ninth-graders 20 years ago — when gunfire erupted in her classroom in a mass shooting that forever changed this community.

On March 21, 2005, five students and a teacher were killed in Dodds' classroom before the shooter turned the gun on himself. To this day, Dodds says student-survivor Jeff May saved her life with a No. 2 pencil he used to attack the shooter.

More than 100 people gathered Friday in the high school gymnasium for a drum circle, prayer and meal to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the shooting, which claimed 10 lives. Organizers handed out white roses to the victims’ families and the heroes who rushed to help.

The school shooting was the largest in the U.S. since Columbine High School in Colorado six years earlier.

Marie Spears is still the lead dispatcher for Red Lake EMS. Her son was at the high school that day, but she had to set aside a mother’s worst fear and coordinate first responders from Red Lake, Leech Lake, Blackduck and beyond.

As soon as that first call came in, she said, “Everybody went running” to the school.

Becki Brun, who had gone to Red Lake High, was a new emergency medical technician when she responded that day. Friday was the first time she and Spears have mustered the strength to attend an anniversary event commemorating the shooting.

“It felt like I died that day,” Brun said. “It killed me, but I would do it over and over again so nobody else would have to go through this. This is my home. These are my people.”

Her relative, Derrick Brun, a high school security guard, was the first person killed when 16-year-old Jeff Weise entered the school armed with pistols and a shotgun.

Weise proceeded to kill teacher Neva Rogers and five ninth-graders: Chase Lussier, Thurlene Stillday, Chanelle Rosebear, Alicia White and Dewayne Lewis. He then turned the gun on himself.

The law enforcement community lost Red Lake police officer Daryl “Dash” Lussier and Lussier’s partner, Michelle Sigana. Weise shot and killed them in their home before driving Lussier’s squad car to the high school.

Leech Lake EMS Director Terry O’Connor remembers rushing student-survivor Jeff May to the hospital.

“I had a hero in my ambulance,” he said at Friday’s ceremony.

O’Connor nominated May for Reader’s Digest Hero of the Year in 2005, an award May won.

Dodds stopped teaching after the shooting and now works with Safe and Sound Schools, a nonprofit founded by parents who lost children in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School later in 2012 in Newtown, Conn. A group of Red Lake survivors traveled to Connecticut that year to meet with Sandy Hook teachers and families.

“It’s something you never get over,” Dodds said. “You don’t accept it. It’s learning to live with it, learning to survive it every day, because I have to drop three kids off at school.”

Some survivors of the Red Lake shooting now work in the school district, law enforcement and tribal court. Starr Jourdain is a 34-year-old paraprofessional at Red Lake High School. She was one of Dodds' students.

“I was a freshman that day,” she said. “I’m also a survivor of that day.”

Jourdain said the anniversary is a difficult day, but that the community is strong and perseveres.

“The kids keep me going,” she said. “They lift my spirit.”

Jourdain lost friends, and some classmates suffered traumatic brain injuries that require the assistance of adult foster staffers. Parents whose children died that day still can’t find the words to describe their loss.

The ceremony Friday was hosted by the 3.21.05 Memorial Fund, a local organization formed by Jourdain and other survivors that is raising money for a permanent memorial site to honor the victims and lives changed by the tragedy.

Jourdain, a 2008 graduate, said she rallied classmates in 2022 to form the organization to build the memorial near the tribal college. They hope to break ground this year after winning a $110,000 grant to get things going — though more than double that will be needed to complete the place of healing and reflection.

Red Lake school Superintendent Tim Lutz said he has witnessed so much growth in Jourdain over the years as she showed up for the district and her community.

“She has risen to this point,” Lutz said. “We also have other staff members who are still here, and it’s important to honor them and elevate their experience … and validate their feelings that they may still be dealing with as survivors.”

He said that when survivors seek an opportunity to be heard, it’s important to listen.

“That’s what we’re able to do when we have a memorial program like today or when we work on building a monument where we can remember and honor the survivors,” Lutz said.

Lisa R. Beaulieu lost her 15-year-old daughter Lucia to suicide a few months after the shooting. The school district hired Beaulieu as a wellness coordinator and suicide prevention specialist.

On Friday, Beaulieu hung up renderings of the memorial that will soon grace the shore of Lower Red Lake. She said she looks forward to having a permanent place of healing for the community.

Tom Barrett was in the 10th grade at Red Lake High 20 years ago. He’s now CEO of the Red Lake Boys and Girls Club.

“Naturally, we all have heavy hearts,” he said, “but I really appreciate the way our community and people that aren’t from Red Lake, but care about Red Lake, how we’ve been able to come together on this day to just be there for each other.

“We inherited the DNA of our ancestors who suffered different kinds of traumas. But we’ve also inherited their resilience.”

After the ceremony, the group walked to the site of the memorial. The breeze off Lower Red Lake was brutally cold, but the march went on — another testament of resiliency, and another showing of community.