Originally published April 6 2005
Minnesota shooter's family wonders if antidepressant drugs played role school shooting
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Minnesota high school student who killed himself and at least nine others at his school had recently increased his dosage of an antidepressant, family members say. And that fact makes them wonder if the drug played a role in the tragedy. Those close to the boy say that, while he was clinically depressed, he seemed to be handling treatments well. Doctors had increased his Prozac dosage just a week before the shootings.
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.
The .22-caliber rifle that Weise apparently used to kill Lussier and his companion, Michelle Sigana, "might have been Dash's rifle, one he kept around for the kids for hunting," Cook said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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