What survivors of Red Lake, Rocori school shootings say in the wake of Annunciation attack

Whitney Spears remembers survivors of the Columbine High School massacre coming to Red Lake, Minn., in 2005 to present a dreamcatcher in the wake of a mass school shooting there.

Five years later, Spears traveled with former classmates to Connecticut to deliver the dreamcatcher to survivors of the 2012 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary, who in turn passed it on in 2018 to the survivors of another school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

There have been so many school shootings since then that Spears said she doesn’t know where the dreamcatcher is today.

The Annunciation Catholic Church attack last week in Minneapolis revived the trauma and grief of survivors of Minnesota’s two previous deadly school shootings. In 2003, a student killed two classmates at Rocori High School in Cold Spring. Two years later in Red Lake, a student killed nine and wounded seven people.

Spears and others said no words can comfort the latest survivors as they enter into this bond of unspeakable tragedy. Like the country at large, some have become numb to the inevitability of school shootings, but they say Annunciation cuts deep.

“It’s so close to home,” Spears said.

In interviews with more than a dozen survivors of Red Lake and Rocori, survivors said they still grieve their friends. Some went down dark paths and found purpose as advocates for mental health or safer schools. Many are parents; some are teachers or work in emergency rooms.

“I’m just trying to heal my inner child, doing things I wish I would have done back then, especially through my kids. I really live through them,” said Spears, now 35, who was a freshman at the time of the Red Lake shooting.

This year, Red Lake survivors gathered for the 20th anniversary of the attack, and parents who lost children in the Rocori school shooting attended a parole board hearing where the shooter was denied release.

There are other reminders of their trauma. Steven Cobenais, 35, survived being shot in the head as a freshman at Red Lake, but bullet fragments remain lodged in his skull. He lost his left eye and over time his ability to speak. His mother, LeeAnn Cobenais, said he recently got out of the hospital again.

“I feel for every family that ever goes through this new journey that we’re given,” she said. “They’ve got a lot in front of them. They didn’t deserve this. Nobody does. ... It’s a forever road. Don’t quit.”

Survivors said the pain lingers as invisible bruises that never quite heal.

When he heard of the Annunciation attack, it took him right back to the moment it happened at Rocori.

“It’s hard to explain because I really truly thought I’d gotten beyond that traumatic event and yet, I was right back in that hole,” Sparby said.

Vicki Johnson, 36, was a freshman at the time of the Rocori shooting. Now as a mother of three children ages 2 to 6, she said she cringed when her oldest told her about the “fire drill” they practiced in kindergarten. She knew it was an active shooter drill.

“This is not the world that I want for my kids, for anybody’s kids,” Johnson said.

She said her message to Annunciation students is what she would tell her kids: “You are safe and I’m really sorry this happened. Know that my job is always to keep you safe.’

That sense of disillusionment about the continued violence is shared by Mark Johnson, the gym teacher who disarmed the Rocori shooter and prevented further carnage. He said he’s frustrated there haven’t been more significant changes to gun laws in the past two decades.

“It’s going to happen again. That’s the saddest thing about it,” he said.

Jeanna Franklin, another student survivor of the attack, remembers the overpowering scent of lilies from bouquets sent to Rocori in the days afterward. But she said fellow students weren’t given enough support.

“What we know now about trauma is you don’t have to be right there to be affected by it,” said Franklin, 38.

That led Franklin to the mental health field, first in K-12 schools and now in higher education: “I wanted to help kids before they got to a point of thinking that violence was an option.”

“We don’t have to find a positive in every situation,” she said. “We don’t have to find a reason why. We might never understand why because it should not have happened.”

The Rocori shooting inspired Sparby to start HuddLUp, a nonprofit that works in classrooms across the country, but mostly in central Minnesota, to help kids build meaningful relationships as a way to improve mental health. The group started in elementary schools and now works with high-schoolers, too.

“Our No. 1 goal is to help them build a healthy community that doesn’t ever allow this shooting to happen again,” he said.

Red Lake teacher Missy Dodds was in the classroom where five ninth-graders were killed before student Jeff May attacked the shooter with a No. 2 pencil. She left teaching and now works with Safe and Sound Schools, a national nonprofit focused on programs and resources for crisis prevention, response and recovery.

Dodds said in a statement that more than words of support, she wants to see people “unite in meaningful action to prevent such tragedies.”

Red Lake Superintendent Tim Lutz sent out an all-staff email this week, before the school year had even begun.

“As we prepare to welcome students back ... we know that this event weighs heavily on our minds, and it may weigh heavily on their minds also,” Lutz wrote in the email, which included employee support resources.

He said in an interview that he didn’t expect a shooting to happen this soon in a new school year and this close.

“In our community, it needs to be recognized that it takes an emotional toll on all of us,” he said. “So I wanted them to know that I see them, appreciate them and ... to feel free to talk with each other or to reach out.”

Dodd said survivors see support fade over time, but she urged Minnesota to commit to long-term care.

Her former student Starr Jourdain, 35, now works with Safe and Sound and is a paraprofessional at Red Lake.

“Being a survivor is a lifelong journey,” Jourdain said, “and my heart is with those impacted by Wednesday’s tragedy at Annunciation Catholic School as they are now on a path they didn’t choose.”

She said she hopes that “the pillars of cultural and community support remain strong for them, both in the short and long term.”

Jourdain and Spears are leading an effort to build a permanent memorial in Red Lake to honor victims and survivors of the shooting. They want a space for the community to talk and heal, like the existing memorial in Cold Spring.

A growing memorial outside Annunciation includes dreamcatchers, believed to drive away nightmares. One dangles from the hand of a Mother Mary statue in front of the church.

More than anything, she found a deeper relationship with her community and spirituality. She hopes the same will happen for Annunciation survivors, but didn’t know how to fully articulate what she would like to tell them and their families.

Like when she went to Sandy Hook, she just wants to give them a hug.