A Long Year at Red Lake: Still haunted, but healing

This story was first published on March 19, 2005.

Some carry physical wounds: A missing eye, a disfigured hand. Many more have hidden scars: They cannot sleep, or bear the darkness. They cannot be alone. The long year since the shootings at Red Lake last March has taken the survivors from Missy Dodds' classroom, where seven people died, down uncertain and unwelcome paths. But they are moving forward. They have struggled with flashbacks and fought isolation. Found courage, and felt the healing power of love. What happens to a young life barely spared? Listen to four Red Lake students who know.

LANCE CROWE

With his first few swings last spring, the golf balls barely made it out of the yard.

Lance Crowe could use only his right hand to grip the golf club; two months after the March 21 school shootings, his left hand was still in a cast. He had no feeling in his index and middle fingers; a bullet had severed the tendons.

But the lanky, athletic 15-year-old had a goal: He wanted to hit a golf ball from his front yard into Red Lake, hundreds of yards away.

He used to be able to do it.

He wanted to do it again.

Lance had been just inches from fellow ninth-grader and basketball teammate Dewayne Lewis when Jeff Weise shot Dewayne point-blank in the head.

Lance knew he would be next.

Do you believe in God? Weise demanded. Lance didn't speak.

Do you believe in God? Weise repeated.

Lance instinctively raised his left hand. The bullet grazed his chin and streaked though his palm, his left shoulder and the right side of his chest. He pretended to be dead. He squinted through one half-closed eye and saw four more classmates and a teacher shot to death. He heard more shots and then saw Weise take his own life.

• • •

In the weeks following, Lance, already shy, turned inward. He stayed quiet at news conferences and at events organized for the shooting victims -- ball games and other outings. He left midway through the funerals of his good friends Chanelle Rosebear and Chase Lussier.

"It was too much for him to take," said his grandmother, Margaret Crowe. "We just cried along with him."

As spring came, Lance spent more and more time in his bedroom in his grandmother's ranch home in Ponemah, surfing the Internet and playing Xbox and PlayStation 2.

He'd gotten clingy, is how his grandmother describes it. She thinks Lance's reclusiveness began once the doctors removed his cast.

"His hand looked like a claw," she said. "They challenged him to move his fingers, and they told him that if he didn't try, they would remain that way."

Twice a week, Lance's family drove him the 50 miles to Bemidji for physical therapy.

At each session, he first went through slow, simple stretches with therapist Mike Morris. Then the hard work began -- the painful loosening of the fingers and breaking up of the scar tissue. Lance grunted. He contorted his face in pain. He clapped his right hand over his face as Morris stretched and bent Lance's thin, injured fingers.

Lance glanced at his mother, and he tried to laugh as a tear rolled down his right cheek.

"Really good, Lance. That's it," Morris said. "One more. Good! Good! Way to go, buddy!"

After the sessions, Lance sometimes fell asleep on the ride home, worn out from the pain.

• • •

X-rays showed shrapnel in Lance's gums, chest and back. The scars made him self-conscious, so he wore muscle shirts over his sinewy chest on those rare swimming outings.

Though he also occasionally went for bike rides, Lance retreated more and more to his room. Family members did what they could to lure him back into the world. Almost everything became therapy for his injured hand. On an April trip to Grand Forks, N.D., he spotted a beagle pup at a pet store. Shilo quickly became part of his life.

The puppy followed Lance everywhere; at night, Shilo slept by his side. Picking up the squirming pup required two hands, helping Lance to use his left hand again.

The Tribal Council doled out donated funds to victims' families; Lance's family used some of its money to buy him a cherry-red ATV. Bouncing through the woods at 40 miles per hour meant gripping the handlebars with both hands.

Slowly, Lance emerged from his room. And every so often, he'd pick up a golf club.

He'd check his grip. Look over at his goal -- the lake, just beyond the tall pine trees in front of his house. Check his stance. Take a practice swing or two. Then, swoosh!

As summer became fall, his follow-through improved, and the rising balls quickly vanished into the pine trees. Not quite there. But better.

By September, his swing was upright, and the balls, arcing higher near the red-orange leaves, traveled farther than they had just three months before.

• • •

Lance hoped that his hand would heal enough so he could play on the basketball team. But it's hard to get on a team if you aren't enrolled in school, and Lance hadn't been back to Red Lake High since the shootings. He had finished the last school year with the help of a tutor, and when classes started after Labor Day, he stayed home. "Nope," he said. "Not yet." Instead, the school district sent a tutor to his home twice a week.

By February, Lance was beginning to lose some of that clinginess and hang out more with his friends. His counselor had dropped his visits from weekly to every two weeks.

Still, he didn't sleep well. He was still awake sometimes at 2 a.m. when his brother Eddie Perkins got home from his second-shift job at the casino in Thief River Falls.

"But we see his progress," said Perkins, 19. "We don't want to rush him into doing anything he don't want to do, y'know?

"I told him, by this time next year, he should be able to play football and definitely play basketball. We all want to see him put that uniform back on again."

These days in Ponemah the branches are bare and the ground is frozen. Lance, who turned 16 on Friday, sometimes has to wear two gloves on his injured hand to keep it warm. Yet his swing gives the balls lift as they soar into gray sky.

Exactly where they've landed Lance doesn't know, but he says he's sure they've gone a long way.

DASHEENA STRONG

Dasheena Strong has quit sleeping.

She has lost 60 pounds. Deep circles ring her brown eyes. Darkness, crowds and loud noises frighten her.

Her life changed last March 21 when she escaped death not once, but twice.

During seventh hour that day, Dasheena, classmate Eldon Cloud and English teacher Neva Rogers were on their way to the school library when a security guard ran past them. Dasheena turned and saw Jeff Weise, dressed all in black. He was carrying guns.

He fired three times at them.

He missed.

Eldon Cloud ran. Rogers fell, then got up and ran behind Dasheena to Missy Dodds' classroom. Dodds shut off the lights and locked the door. Dasheena said Rogers grabbed her and prayed.

God, if you're here with us today, now's the time to call on you for help, Rogers said.

Weise broke into the room and shot Rogers in the face. Dasheena was splattered with her teacher's blood.

• • •

All summer, Dasheena stayed close to home in Redby. She didn't go to Bemidji to hang out at the mall. She didn't go to Ponemah to visit her sister.

"Nothing has been fun for me," she said. When she did sleep, she sometimes woke up in tears. She went to counseling, and every Tuesday and Thursday she went up the road to play softball. It was time outdoors, with friends, doing something normal.

On a steamy, mosquito-heavy August evening, Dasheena was chatting with friends at the ball field when she heard a loud bang! bang! bang!

She screamed.

It was only firecrackers, but Dasheena later told her family that the popping and snapping brought her back instantly to March 21. She played in the game that night, but she was clearly shaken.

Most summer evenings, Dasheena made sure she was home before dark. She stretched out in a recliner or sat at the kitchen table, writing in her diary. Counselors encouraged her to jot down her feelings. Most entries consisted of how her day had gone, and a lot of poetry. Much of it was related to the shootings.

Sometimes she wrote all night; sleeping in the dark led to violent dreams. She stopped going to bed at all and instead tried to nap during the day.

Her parents, Jake Thunder and Rochelle Strong, stayed up at night with her. They took turns brewing coffee and lay awake watching TV on adjacent sofas.

Her younger sisters, Delisha and Datonnah, tried to stay awake, too, but they yawned and nodded off -- sometimes in mid-sentence.

The nights ticked by slowly, slowly.

• • •

In the fall, Dasheena did her best to return to school -- even on no sleep. She wanted to graduate and go on to college. Maybe she could become a teacher, like Missy Dodds, whose classroom she fled to that day, or like Neva Rogers, who died.

But walking through the main door gave her flashbacks. So did going near the atrium and the library. She remembered security guard Derrick Brun, who had greeted her each morning with a smile. She remembered running past his dead body after he was shot.

She did not make it through the school year; she did not even make it to Christmas.

On Sept. 23, her father waited outside their home for the bus to arrive from school. But when it did, only Dasheena's younger sister Deliesha got off.

"Dad, have you seen Dasheena?" Delisha said. "There was a fire drill at school today and everybody said she freaked out."

Her father bolted up the road to borrow a car, but a blue vehicle pulled up and stopped him in his tracks. Dasheena got out, pale and shaken.

"I'm never going back to that school again!" she cried as her father draped his arm around her slumped shoulders.

She did go back, but by October, her attendance had become sporadic. By November, she had dropped out and left home.

She stayed briefly at a friend's house, helping with her infant daughter -- one of the rare occasions when she grew light-hearted and laughed.

She enrolled three days a week in Red Lake's Alternative Learning Center in Redby, not too far from her home, and spent the rest of her week with her grandmother in Bemidji.

Graduating in May was no longer likely.

"I messed that all up. I'll [graduate] in the summer, I promise," Dasheena said. "I think I can still go to college this fall."

She still doesn't sleep well at night, but she's doing better. She has put on a little weight, and she's spending more time with friends.

She said her progress is a daily struggle.

"I'm finally allowing myself to do things," she said. "I'm not always happy when I'm gone [from home], but it's getting better."

Neva Rogers' daughters were with Dasheena when she returned to the high school on Jan. 18 for a meeting on how to mark the first anniversary of the shootings.

Many familiar faces were missing that day, including that of Dodds.

Like Dasheena, Dodds had returned to school after the shootings but found it too difficult to continue. She went on medical leave for post-traumatic stress.

When the two talked in July, Dodds told Dasheena: 'It's not that I don't love you. It's just that I can't be there for you right now.' "

Still, Dasheena would leave messages on Dodds' voicemail, just to hear to her voice. Then, by chance, they ran into each other on Thursday at the high school, of all places. They vowed to keep in touch.

"I hugged her forever," Dasheena said. "I didn't want her to leave."

Seeing Dodds reminded Dasheena, now 18, of her emotional visit to the school two months ago.

While sitting in the meeting that January day, Dasheena had another flashback to March 21. Her heart started pounding. Her face reddened. She breathed hard.

She stepped outside; she could have walked away. Nobody would have faulted her.

"I went back inside," she said. "I walked through and told myself I needed to be strong. I was in there for four hours.

"Can you believe that?"

STEVE COBENAIS

In Room 323 of Bemidji's North Country Regional Hospital a few weeks ago, Steve Cobenais was sleeping peacefully.

Suddenly, he moaned. His head, arms and legs began to shake. His mother ran to his side.

"We need a doctor in here!" his father yelled.

Nurses rushed into the room, where Steve was being treated for an eye infection. It was his first seizure in five months, and his fourth since taking a bullet to the face last March 21.

A year ago, Steve was the family joker, a basketball player, a hard worker. He and his father, Llewellyn (Sacky) Thunder, worked together out in the woods, hauling firewood. Steve used to beg for the keys to the truck so he could go speeding across the icy forest roads, just for kicks.

A shotgun blast to his head ended all of that. It damaged his brain and left him without a left eye. When his parents arrived at the Fargo hospital that night, doctors told them that their son was in a struggle for his life.

But within two weeks, Steve started to get better. Nurses saw his legs paddle as he slept -- relatives said they believed he was running from shooter Jeff Weise in his dreams. They called him "Miracle Boy."

His father fought back tears when his son swam back into consciousness. Groggy, hooked up to IVs, Steve had questions. What happened? Where was he? When would he go home?

You got shot in school, my boy, Thunder told his son, choking on his own tears. You lost some of your friends, too.

Who?

Chase, Thurlene, Alicia, Chanelle, Thunder said slowly. And Dewayne.

As tears streamed down Steve's face, Thunder leaned in closer to tell him more.

Son, when you got shot, you lost your eye. You may never work again.

The doctors quietly left the room as Steve sobbed. His father placed a hand over his son's bandaged head.

• • •

The bullet has damaged Steve's brain. He stutters occasionally and repeats himself. He takes up to a dozen pills a day, mostly to prevent seizures. The meds and inactivity have added 30 pounds to his frame. Sometimes, he can't tell if he's hot or cold. He frequently touches his left eye, still coming to terms with the fact that it's gone. Of all the children wounded that day, he was the most severely hurt.

Steve has had three major operations and expects at least two more. His medical bills have already totaled more than $400,000. On Wednesday, doctors inserted a prosthetic eye in Steve's left socket. Holding a mirror up to his face, he looked astonished at his new appearance.

He still has some of his trademark wisecracking humor. But he's not as sharp as before, his family says. Not quite the same fun-loving Steve who wore his little sister's cheerleading outfit to school two Halloweens ago. These days, his snappy one-liners are rare.

Steve used to go to basketball practice after school and then work at the family firewood business until midnight. Now, he tires easily. When he plays outside, his sisters and cousin watch his every step.

Steve hates it when his siblings hover. He halfheartedly pushes them away; he prefers it when they argue with each other because it takes the attention off him.

"He don't want no pity party," his father said. "He don't want nobody calling him a cripple."

Yet, the entire household, including Steve's sisters, Cheree, 17, Madelyn, 14, Keahna, 9, and cousin Lewis Thunder, 14, monitors him. They watch to make sure he doesn't get too warm or too cold. They worry when he stumbles on the stairs. They limit his time on the computer and PlayStation2, because the video game controllers' "dual shock" feature can trigger grand mal seizures.

After his first two seizures, Steve began sleeping beside his parents. He now sleeps on a mattress in the living room near his older sister.

During Steve's recovery, the family has had to uproot three times. While Steve was in the hospital, thieves repeatedly broke into the Cobenais home in Redby. The family moved in with relatives, and then crammed into a hotel room at a casino. A church helped them find a house in Bemidji for six months. They moved back to the reservation this month.

The frequent moves have been hard on Steve. He just learns his way around one place when they have to pack up and move to another.

• • •

A bright red sheet of paper dangled from the Other Store's bulletin board in Redby, an open invitation from Steve's family. "Come celebrate Steve Cobenais 16th Birthday Party, Red Lake Community Center, Friday, September 16 at 3 p.m."

The aging community center had held the wake of Chase Lussier, Steve's ninth-grade basketball teammate. Now it was the scene of a celebration, with more than 40 people gathered to share wild rice, fried chicken and Indian fry bread.

Steve, dressed in a "Sweet 16" T-shirt, stood near a fan to stay cool in the autumn heat. Some girls surrounded him, asking how he felt, and gently touching the area below his left eye. "I guess I still got my touch with the ladies, eh?" he said, waving a wad of birthday money like a fan.

When Steve blew out the candles on his birthday cake, his mother, LeeAnn Cobenais-Thunder, began to cry. She squeezed him close. "I can't believe you're still with us," she said. "Thank you, God."

Hours earlier, Steve's father had paid a visit to Jeff Weise's grave. He stared fiercely down at the metal marker in the earth.

Why did you do this to us? he said. Why couldn't you tell people what was wrong with you? Why didn't you ask for help? Why did you make so many people hurt?

Why?

• • •

In September, Steve's sisters went back to school. It wasn't until October that he had the doctors' OK to return to the high school on a half-day schedule.

His return was inspiring, students and staff said. He moved into special education classes. Because he missed playing basketball, the boys' varsity squad made him a team manager.

Still, he's had some harrowing days.

On Jan. 17, a bomb threat was found at school. Students were moved to the humanities center not far away, where Steve called his mother. Her fear grew when saw flashing red police lights down Hwy. 1, the reservation's main drag.

She ran inside the center and found Steve in a corner with several teachers and security guards.

The next day, Steve told his mother that he didn't want to go back to school -- at least, not that day.

"I thought something bad was going to happen," he said, angrily, almost shouting.

He paused, chewed his lower lip. After a moment, he whispered: "I don't want anybody else to die."

CHON GAI'LA MORRIS

The drums were in sync with his heartbeat. The sweat dripped off his head, which bobbed in rhythm as he danced proudly, stepping so high his knees nearly reached his chin. Dressed in handmade moccasins and a beaded headband, he circled the drummers, moving to indigenous chants.

Chon Gai'la Morris was healing his pain in true Anishinabe style.

After the March 21 shootings, after his closest friend died in his arms, Chon Gai'la could have moved away. He contemplated going to Wisconsin to be with his father. He contemplated fleeing the reservation and the memories and the pain.

But he wanted to stay in Red Lake, in the neighborhood known as Back of Town, where he lived with his mother, brothers, grandpa and cousins.

He said he wanted to get the best of his demons. For himself, and for Chase and the others who died before his eyes.

• • •

Chon Gai'la and Chase Lussier, both 15, were cousins, but they were like brothers. Weekends, they played basketball and video games, usually at the home of their grandfather, Albert Lussier.

On March 21, Jeff Weise looked Chon Gai'la in the eye and said, Do you believe in God?

Chon Gai'la doesn't know why he answered the way he did. No, he told Weise.

Weise turned and fired. Chase fell, dead, into Chon Gai'la's lap.

• • •

After Chase's death, Chon Gai'la moved into his grandfather's little blue rambler. Lussier believed that Chon Gai'la was trying to connect with Chase's spirit.

"I'm so grateful Gai'la's still here," Lussier said. "I almost lost them both."

For three days, Chase's body lay in the Red Lake Community Center, dressed in a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey. And for three days, Chon Gai'la rarely left the center. He cleaned tables, emptied ashtrays and poured out cigarettes onto paper plates for weary mourners, many of whom were going from wake to wake. Exhausted and red-eyed, he made sure that the peace fire outside kept burning.

He wrapped his arms around Alex Roy, the mother of Chase's infant son, when they read condolences at a makeshift memorial outside the middle school.

His brothers, elders and friends wondered aloud -- when would he break down? The funeral? The burial?

Chon Gai'la remained strong. He served as a pallbearer, carrying Chase's casket in the cloudy spring chill, wearing a T-shirt bearing Chase's face.

"I'm a'right," was his response to those concerned.

But eventually, the nightmares got to him.

Visions of his bloody classmates screamed in his face, he told his mother, Cindy Lussier.

"Why did you let us die?" he said they yelled. "Why did you let him do that to us?"

"He showed no tears," his mother said. "But you could tell that it was eating him up inside."

• • •

Chon Gai'la tormented himself with questions and guilt. "Why did I say 'No?' Why did I live? Why didn't I do something to stop him?"

His brothers, Johnny, 20, Vernon, 18, and Chauncey, 14, told him that he couldn't be responsible for Weise's actions. His mother worried that he might do something rash, might harm himself.

But instead, Chon Gai'la found a way to heal himself.

Summer arrived, and he attended weekend camping retreats and traditional Indian healing ceremonies. In June, friends asked him to dance with them at powwows across Indian Country. He agreed. For nearly two months, Chon Gai'la, who had danced since he was 6, let out his emotions in "powwow trails" through Iowa and the Dakotas.

His dance chants helped release his suffering. The stomps helped eliminate fears. He also participated in traditional sweat-lodge ceremonies, where people poured water over red-hot rocks to produce bursts of healing steam.

During these spiritual cleansings, he asked to be freed from his sadness. During one sweat in South Dakota, he saw Chase's spirit.

"He told me that he's OK, to stay strong and to go on with my life," an inspired Chon Gai'la told his mother.

Now if only he could get through the month before school.

• • •

While shooting hoops one August afternoon, Chon Gai'la spotted Jeff May at a football practice. May had been shot, too, after trying desperately to stop Weise by stabbing him with a pencil. He survived, but he now walks with a limp and can't use his left arm.

In the shade of the bleachers, Chon Gai'la and Jeff talked for more than an hour. Chon Gai'la said he agonized that he hadn't struck Weise with a chair.

Jeff consoled Chon Gai'la. It was probably for the best that he didn't do anything, Jeff said. It could've been worse.

"I told him that I was going to attack, but I got this far," Chon Gai'la said later, moving one step forward. "Then it was like this force pulled me back down."

• • •

On the first day of school, a frosty glaze coated the windows of the Morris house. The bus was due any minute, but there was no sign of Chon Gai'la. Then the front door ripped open, and Shane, a 7-year-old version of his older brother, jumped off the front steps. Chon Gai'la, wearing a new white and red South Pole T-shirt and baggy jeans, stumbled out after him. His yawns confirmed that he had barely slept.

The bus pulled up, rumbling through the morning silence. Shane hopped aboard, and Chon Gai'la slowly followed. He stared out the window, thinking about the shootings, about Chase, his anger, his healing, his family.

I can do this, Chon Gai'la told himself.

When the bus pulled up at the school just before 8:30 a.m., he was the first person off.

He stopped and took a long deep breath of that clean autumn air. His brother Chauncey and others were already there, waiting for him near the entrance.

"You ready?" Chauncey asked.

Chon Gai'la stared intently. He nodded -- twice -- and slowly led them through the metal detectors.

Since then, his grades have improved. He's staying the course, despite bomb threats and other problems at school. From time to time he talks about staying home. But his mother isn't having it. For now.

"I don't want there to be no more setbacks," she said. "I want him to finish what he started."