Cold Spring school shooting Shooting breaks out in school Veteran teacher called hero Friends of alleged shooter think teasing played a part Witnesses tell the story Parents, students examine their relationships The suspect is charged Students return to school Far from Cold Spring, students shaken by shooting Study: Deadly lessons. Understanding lethal school violence Did bullying play a part? Audio Two boys shot at central Minnesota high school, one dies; suspect in custody (story audio) Charlie Kyte, executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators Photos Students embrace after the shooting Parents walk to the school to pick up their children Crime scene Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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Two boys shot at central Minnesota high school, one dies; suspect in custody
by Tim Post, Minnesota Public Radio
September 25, 2003

Students embrace after the shooting. (MPR Photo/Tim Post)

Churches in the central Minnesota town of Cold Spring held special services last night to mark the end of a tragic day. A 15-year-old boy shot two of his classmates at Rocori High School around noon. One of the students died, another is in critical condition. Students and teachers in Cold Spring now begin the work of trying to recover.

Cold Spring, Minn. — About an hour after Wednesday's shooting in Cold Spring, students wandered out of school still trying to figure out what had happened.

Senior Matt Hesse says around lunchtime students were told there was a shooting and they should stay in their rooms.

	Parents walk to the school to pick up their children

"We had to go up against the wall and stay away from all the windows and doors and we were just shocked," he said. "People kind of started crying a little bit, and they were just really, really worried. Is this a drill? What's going on? And I asked my teacher if he says code red, is that a drill? He said, 'No, that's the real deal.' We were just, like, 'Oh wow, what's going on?'"

THE VICTIMS

Aaron Rollins was a senior who enjoyed the outdoors. He was gregarious, athletic and often had a pleasant word for passing teachers or classmates. He worked at the local Subway sandwich shop.

Seth Bartell was a freshman who liked to skateboard and snowboard, quiet but a good kid according to those who knew him.

About the only thing Rollins and Bartell had in common was that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time at Rocori High School on Wednesday.

Officials and teachers said there was no indication that they and John Jason McLaughlin, the 15-year-old suspected of shooting them, were any more than passing acquaintances.

Rollins was walking with other members of a senior physical education class on their way to the gym to play badminton. Bartell was with a freshman class already in the gym.

Rollins was shot in neck while in the locker room. He died a short time later.

Bartell was shot in the gymnasium. He was clinging to life at St. Cloud Hospital after several hours of surgery. Officials said he was shot in the head and chest. A bullet passed through the front of his brain.

Rocori Superintendent Scott Staska said McLaughlin did have some disciplinary problems at school, but nothing that made teachers think something was about to happen.

Greg Roth, a senior, saw Rollins just before Rollins left for his gym class. "I wish I'd known what would happen. I would've told him I love him or something," Roth said. "He's one of those guys who always had a smile on his face. If something was going wrong, he was the first guy who'd talk to you or ask you what he could do to help you."

	Crime scene

"Aaron was a very outgoing kid; always had a smile on his face, always had a comment for you," said Brian Athman, who teaches health and phy-ed.

Rollins has a twin brother, Adam, Athman said. "Anywhere you saw one of them, you saw both of them," Athman said. They went to basketball camp. Baseball and football were big with them, but boating, hunting and fishing on Big Lake in Richmond were their passions.

"He always made something out to be funny," said Justin Hansen, 18, a senior who said he spoke with Rollins Wednesday morning before the shooting.

"I just talked to him this morning about snowmobiling in Michigan," Hansen said. The trip had become tradition for Rollins and his group of friends - this winter's trip would have marked the third consecutive time the friends would head for Michigan's Upper Peninsula to snowmobile. Hansen said Rollins was so excited about the trip he was making plans for the group to go twice before their senior year ended.

Amanda Theel, 17, a senior, recalled taking a two-week trip with Rollins to the Boundary Waters area the summer after seventh grade. She remembered him looking after her and being protective on the trip.

"He taught me how to fish," Theel said. "He was a great guy."

Chris Butala, 17, said he and Rollins met each other 30 minutes before the shooting.

"We were talking in the hallway, joking," Butala said. "I feel terrible right now. I can't even explain it, it's the worst feeling in the world. I just lost one of my best friends. I am never going to see him again."

Kati Brink taught both victims when they were eighth-graders.

Rollins, she said, "would be the one I could count on to get the soccer balls out for me. He was a helping hand, and he was always there."

Bartell, she said, was also a well-liked boy who had many friends. He was just more quiet, a little more reserved.

His friends said he had a passion for sports such as skateboarding at the skate park in town, snowboarding at Powder Ridge Ski Area in Kimball and BMX biking.

"He's basically good at every extreme sport. He's just built for it," said Jared Nordstrom, a freshman.

THE ALLEGED SHOOTER

Neighbors who knew John Jason McLaughlin said the 15-year-old seemed like a decent kid. He did yard work for his parents without complaint and liked hanging out and playing video games.

WCCO-TV reported that the suspect sent a short e-mail to a classmate before the shootings. It didn't specify what he planned, but he asked her not to tell anyone and it closed by saying, "So I guess this is goodbye my love." The station said it was withholding her identity at the request of her parents and authorities.

"He just seemed really normal," Brianna Sullivan told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. Sullivan, an eighth-grader who grew up across the street from the McLaughlin family, said she chatted with him by phone almost daily.

But lately, those who know McLaughlin said, he began to change. He seemed more withdrawn and didn't want to come out to play. Some described him as intensely shy and self-conscious about his severe acne.

"It really was this summer that things seemed different," Jess Phillips, 12, who lives about a block away, told the Star Tribune.

Neil Wackwitz, 15, who was perhaps his closest friend in the neighborhood, also told the newspaper said McLaughlin seemed to withdraw this summer.

Sullivan said she noticed lately that he didn't seem to have many other friends. She wondered whether his small size or his acne played a role.

"Kids would tease him about that," she said.

Wackwitz said he and McLaughlin used to play video or computer games or hang out. But lately, McLaughlin usually said he didn't want to. He also started walking home after school instead of riding the bus.

Wackwitz said he felt bad but didn't think anything was seriously wrong. He said McLaughlin never mentioned that anything or anyone was bugging him. In particular, he said, McLaughlin never complained to him that kids at school were picking on him.

Sullivan said that McLaughlin had mentioned to her that people were picking on him but that he didn't seem too concerned about it.

But she said there were signs that something was amiss. During one of their long chats, she recalled, McLaughlin told her that he was being tested this summer for a split-personality disorder. She said he never mentioned it again.

Teacher Pete Spengler, who had McLaughlin in his science class at Rocori Middle School, told the Star Tribune that he never would have thought the youngster would be involved in something like this.

"When I look back, in my mind's eye, I see an ordinary kid - always smiling, always happy, always playing around," he said. "In class, he always had a lab partner. He never had a problem matching up with someone."

While many students didn't even know him as of Wednesday morning, everyone was talking about McLaughlin by afternoon

"He kept to himself in class," freshman Kelsey Lintgen told the St. Cloud Times.

"He never talked," freshman Shayna Wander told the newspaper. "It didn't seem like he was there."

"I never even heard of him even though he grew up in Cold Spring," junior Katie Kremer said.

But after the shooting Kremer noticed a photo of him in Tuesday's edition of the Cold Spring Record. A picture of him as a toddler tipping out of his stroller appeared at the bottom of the weekly newspaper's front page as part of its "Way back when..." feature.

"It's an unbelievable coincidence," said Mike Austreng, editor and publisher of the Record. "That picture was picked on Friday ... from a file of boxes strictly at random."

Austreng said the Record has literally thousands of pictures to choose for the feature each week.

Whether the photo could have prompted the shootings in any way crossed Austreng's mind, but he said he quickly discarded the notion.

"The paper comes out Tuesday, and most people read it at night," Austreng said. "There's no way that from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning this could have played a role."

PREPARED FOR THE WORST

Superintendent Staska says the school was prepared for such an emergency as what unfolded on Wednesday. For they past three years Rocori has held drills to deal with a shooting, the last one was a few weeks ago.

"Quite honestly when we ran the practice drills a couple of weeks ago it didn't go as well as we would like. So it gave us an opportunity to go through the issues and remind everyone of the importance of it and unfortunately we had to play it out today," he said.

Minnesota's education commissioner says staff and students at Rocori handled the situation well. Cheri Pierson Yecke says Minnesota schools are required by law to have plans in place to deal with such an emergency.

"We know that 100 percent of the school districts in this state submitted assurances that they do have such plans in place, and I think that the quick action of the school personnel and students at Rocori High School shows that they have a plan, they were prepared to take action in a difficult situation and they knew just what to do," she said.

Figuring out what to do next is going to be the toughest part for teachers and students at Rocori High School. Superintendent Scott Staska is encouraging high school students to come back to school today. Staska says they'll hold a two-hour couseling session for students and their parents. He says they don't want students at home alone dealing with the aftermath of the shooting.

"If we can bring them in have them in a safe setting we believe we can talk through it, debrief the situation, give them the support resources and then allow them to deal with it at that point."

Staska expects that Rocori will be back to a full day of classes by Friday.

Meanwhile the investigation into the shooting will continue today. Officials from the Cold Spring police, along with the Stearns County sheriff, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension the FBI and the ATF are all working on the case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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