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Last update: March 24, 2005 at 11:55 PM

Relatives: Did meds play a role?

Chuck Haga,  Star Tribune

March 25, 2005 REDLAKE0325.WEISE

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BEMIDJI, MINN. -- Jeff Weise had "a good relationship" with the
grandfather he shot and killed on Monday as prelude to his deadly assault
on students and others at Red Lake High School, according to relatives who
are struggling to understand what might have pushed the teenager from
sometimes bizarre behavior to mass murder and suicide.

They have sifted through the traumas of his childhood: his father's
suicide, the car accident that left his mother with reduced mental
capacity, the shuttling between the Red Lake Reservation and the Twin
Cities, and the taunts of peers over his appearance, size and outsider
behavior.

They wondered, too, about medication he was supposedly taking for
depression, and a recent increase in his prescribed dosage.

Lee Cook, director of the American Indian Cultural Center at Bemidji
State University and a first cousin to Sgt. Daryl (Dash) Lussier, the
grandfather, talked about the tragedy Thursday after meeting on the
reservation with Lussier's brother, three daughters and other family
members.

Jeff Weise

Polaris Images

"The daughters said Jeff loved his grandfather, and his grandfather
loved him," Cook said. "There had never been any serious differences or
harsh words between them.

"They were surprised by all of this, but they were stunned he would
shoot his grandfather."

The .22-caliber rifle that Weise apparently used to kill Lussier and
his companion, Michele Sigana, "might have been Dash's rifle, one he kept
around for the kids for hunting," Cook said.

Dosage increased

Weise's relatives "knew he had a problem with depression, and they took
him to treatment," Cook said. "He was getting counseling." His medication
dosage had been increased a week earlier, Cook added.

His grandmother, Shelda Lussier, 54, said he saw a mental health
professional at Red Lake Hospital on Feb. 21, the same day his
prescription was refilled for 60 milligrams a day of Prozac, which he had
been taking since last summer, the Washington Post reported.

Studies have linked Prozac and similar antidepressants to a greater
risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in kids. In October, the Food and
Drug Administration revised the drugs' packaging to warn health
professionals that they should closely monitor young patients when an
antidepressant is prescribed or the dose is changed.

Prozac's manufacturer said monitoring patients being treated for
depression is critical, especially if they are children.

Weise, in hundreds of postings attributed to him on the Internet over
the past year or so, noted that he was on antidepressants, was going
through therapy in Thief River Falls and had attempted suicide at least
once by cutting his wrists.

In a posting in January, Weise also wrote of his regret over not having
ended his life and hinted that another attempt could be on the way.
Friends of Weise said this week that he had tried to kill himself earlier
this year.

School officials and others have refused to discuss his medical
situation except to confirm that he was placed on "homebound status" this
year for an unspecified medical problem.

Relatives also "knew he spent time on the Internet, but they didn't
really know what he was into there," Cook said, and reports detailing
Weise's postings on a Nazi website have them shaking their heads.

Weise, under a variety of user names, also visited other sites dealing
with everything from government conspiracies to surviving school
shootings. Last fall he posted a bloody animated video on the Internet in
which four people are shot to death before the gunman shoots himself. "He
was brighter than usual and had a vocabulary more like a college student
than a 16-year-old," Cook said.

School to school

Weise also had a traumatic early childhood, moving from school to
school and experiencing the loss of both parents before he was 10 years
old. His father, Daryl Lussier Jr., committed suicide in July 1997 during
a police stand-off on the reservation. Weise's mother, Joanne, suffered
brain damage in 1999 when she and a friend crashed their car after
drinking.

Shortly after his father's suicide, Weise was enrolled in the fourth
grade at B.F. Pearson Elementary School in Shakopee in September 1997. He
stayed until the first week of his fifth-grade year, at which point he was
withdrawn and enrolled at Bluff Creek Elementary School in Chaska.

Bluff Creek Principal Cath Gallagher said Weise left school in April
1998, about a month after his mother's traffic accident.

In his Internet postings, Weise said that before her accident his
mother would hit him often, yell at him and tell him that his birth had
been a mistake.

According to his Internet writings, Weise dressed in a Goth style with
a long black coat, black boots and at times red hair spiked into devil's
horns.

"I just don't know if anybody gave a lot of credence to the turmoil
this guy lived with," Cook said. People said he was "just going through a
phase" with his unusual appearance and outsider attitudes, "and that
probably was devastating to him."

"I think you can get to the point where you feel you have no relief.
Maybe he thought his grandpa should have been more cognizant of that."

Visitation for Lussier and his girlfriend, Michelle Sigana, began
Thursday at the Humanities Building in Red Lake. Funeral services for them
will be held there at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Chuck Haga is at [email-masked].

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