From the archive: Survivors discuss the Red Lake shooting
Original broadcast date: March 24, 2005
Cody Thunder, a sophomore at Red Lake High School, was among the seven students injured on March 21, 2005, when 16-year-old student Jeff Wiese opened fire at the school, killing seven others and himself.
Thunder gave a firsthand account of the shooting three days after it happened, while still recovering at North Country Regional Hospital.
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He immediately recognized the sound of gunfire when classmate Jeff Weise began shooting, Thunder said. Even so, he couldn't believe what he was seeing when, moments later, Weise peered through a window into his biology classroom.
"I was in shock," Thunder said, "and I didn't think that he — I was, like, 'What is he doing?' And then he ended up shooting. I thought he was messing around. I thought it was a paint-ball gun or something. He had a mean face."
Thunder was shot in the hip.
This story, by MPR News reporter Michael Khoo, aired on March 24, 2005.
Red Lake: 10 years later
Ten years ago, on March 21, 2005, 16-year-old Jeff Wiese shot his grandfather, his grandfather's partner and seven of his classmates at Red Lake High School before shooting himself.
For four people who lived through the shootings that day, the trauma has echoed in ways that would have been hard to predict, from where they find comfort to how they sit when they're in public.
• Feeling scars at Red Lake 10 years later
From the MPR News archive
• What happened at Red Lake? A documentary