REDBY (AP) &045; Reggie Graves was watching a movie about Shakespeare when the massacre began just down the hall.

He heard the first pops as the gunman shot his way past the metal detector at the door, killing a guard. During the pause, Red Lake High School teachers reassured students that the noise was nothing. Then, in a classroom nearby, he heard the gunman ask Graves’ friend Ryan a question.

&uot;He asked Ryan if he believed in God,&uot; Graves said. &uot;And then he shot him.&uot;

The gunman killed 10 people, smiling and waving as he fired. The dead included his own grandfather, a woman who may have been his grandfather’s wife or girlfriend, along with a teacher, a school security guard, five other students, and himself. Several others were wounded.

Authorities said the gunman killed himself after exchanging fire with police. It was the nation’s

worst school shooting since the Columbine massacre in 1999.

Authorities didn’t identify the gunman, but several students said he was Jeff Weise, a teen who may or may not have been a student at the school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in far northwestern Minnesota.

As the gunshots continued, teachers herded students from one room to another, trying to move away from the sound of the shooting. Graves, 14, said some students crouched under desks.

Some pleaded with the gunman to stop.

&uot;You could hear a girl saying, ‘No, Jeff, quit, quit. Leave me alone. What are you doing?&uot; Sondra Hegstrom told The Pioneer of Bemidji.

Student Ashley Morrison said she heard shots, then saw Weise’s face peering though a door window of a classroom where she was hiding with several other students. After banging at the door, Weise walked away and she heard more shots, she said.

&uot;I can’t even count how many gunshots you heard, there was over 20 … there were people screaming, and they made us get behind the desk,&uot; Morrison said.

FBI spokesman Paul McCabe said that at some point, the gunman exchanged gunfire with Red Lake police in a hallway, then retreated to a classroom, where he was believed to have shot himself.

All of the dead students were found in one room, including the boy believed to be the shooter.

The reservation in this rural, heavily wooded part of the state is larger than Rhode Island, but many of its 5,162 residents &045; nearly all of them Chippewa Indians &045; know each other. As Graves recounted his terrifying day at school, his father, Preston Graves, recalled that he graduated from Red Lake High School with the gunman’s grandfather, Daryl Lussier, who was killed. The school has about 300 students.

Graves paused while speaking as a message came over the police scanner in his home from tribal chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr., who called the shootings one the &uot;most painful occurrences in the history of our tribe.&uot; Jourdain went on to say during the transmission that the numerous federal and state law enforcement agencies investigating the shootings were there at the invitation of the tribe, which considers itself a sovereign nation.

There was no immediate indication of the gunman’s motive. But several students said he espoused anti-social beliefs, and he may have posted messages on a neo-Nazi Web site expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler.

A writer who identified himself as Jeff Weise of the Red Lake Reservation posted the messages under the nickname &uot;Todesengel&uot; &045; German for Angel of Death. An April 2004 posting by him referred to being accused of &uot;a threat on the school I attend,&uot; though the writer later said he was cleared.

Relatives told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that Weise was a loner who usually wore black and was teased by other kids. Relatives told the newspaper his father committed suicide four years ago, and that his mother was in a Minneapolis nursing home due to a brain injury suffered in a car accident.

It was the nation’s worst school shooting since two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 before killing themselves on April 20, 1999.

The last fatal school shootings involving a student also happened in Minnesota, in September 2003, when two students were fatally shot at Rocori High School in Cold Spring. Classmate John Jason McLaughlin, who was 15 at the time, awaits trial in the case. That was the first major school shooting reported since 2001.

Outside North Country Regional Hospital in Bemidji, Martha Thunder shivered in a blue sweat shirt while smoking a cigarette. Her son Cody, 15, a sophomore, was being treated inside for a gunshot wound to the hip. She called him one of the lucky ones.

Thunder said her son told her what he saw. &uot;He heard gunshots and the teacher said ‘No that’s the janitor’s doing something’ and the next thing he knew the kid walked in there and pointed the gun right at him,&uot; she said.

The shooter fired twice. The first bullet struck a clock on the wall behind Cody, who ducked. The second bullet hit him in the hip, she said.

&uot;I’m just afraid of tonight,&uot; she said, &uot;because I just know he’s going to wake with nightmares.&uot;

(Red Lake High School: