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It wasn’t just the frigid air that chilled the small town of Stewartville in southeast Minnesota Monday morning. It was the shock and sadness of a shooting in the high school parking lot early last Friday morning that left one student critically wounded and a recent graduate dead.
"I know that it's affected a lot of people around here,” said Stewartville resident Corey Goetsch. “Everybody's trying to come together."
Goetsch stopped to share his thoughts outside a grocery store on the town's main thoroughfare as Salvation Army bellringers clanged next to their familiar red kettles, reminding people that what’s usually a season of giving, sharing and joy is marred by tragedy.
"I woke up and I couldn't believe it,” said Goetsch, 29. “Honestly, I was out walking my dog, and then I heard the sirens, and then I was wondering what happened. Stuff started coming out. I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it."
In the predawn darkness at about 5 a.m. Friday, the Stewartville high school wrestling team and their coaches were boarding a bus in the school’s parking lot, preparing to head to an out-of-town wrestling meet. Suddenly, people on the bus heard a gun shot. And then another.
According to the Olmsted County sheriff, one student wrestler had been shot as he walked across the parking lot. The alleged shooter, 19-year old Logan Moyer, who had just graduated last year and had been on this same wrestling team, then shot himself and died.
As of Sunday night, the student who was shot remained in critical but stable condition at Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys Campus in Rochester.
Goetsch says he competed on the wrestling team himself. He says his hometown is now full of grief and confusion, but he said he's also heartened by seeing the community unite.
"I know a lot of people have been opening up doors, coming together — churches, local groups and everything,” Goetsch said. “There's been a lot of support. There's been a lot of things going on, I guess, around the community. So that's good to see.”
As classes resumed Monday, Stewartville schools superintendent Belinda Selfors says the district will be supporting and counseling anyone who is grieving and trying to process what happened.
“We are committed to ensuring that our schools are places of care, understanding and stability,” Selfors said at a news conference Monday morning. “We will focus on providing space, flexibility and support for students and staff and to address any concerns that they may have. We are also coordinating efforts to support families who have been directly impacted by this tragedy and whose hearts have been broken, ensuring that they receive compassion, resources and ongoing care.”
All across town, people appear to be doing just that for one another. Eric Hjelter, 67, lives in Rochester but he works part time in Stewartville. As he sat in his car at a local gas station, he told MPR News that when he heard the news, he immediately checked in on his neighbor.
"He's 13, he goes to Stewartville schools and right away we contacted his mother, because we know that he's a little bit of an anxious kid; and hoping that he was okay and everything was fine," Hjelter said, adding that the grief here is all around.
"It's just total sadness,” he said. “I mean, it had to come to this, you know, there's no reason for it."
The investigation into the shooting is ongoing. Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson would not say if the shooter, Moyer, knew the boy he allegedly shot, how they were connected or even if they may have wrestled together.
Torgerson says it doesn't appear to be a random shooting, but says he can’t yet and may never be able to offer a reason or explanation for the shooting.
"The biggest question people have is why. We don't know why, and we may not ever know why."
Torgerson cautions that rumors and speculation often do more harm than good, and he says that it may take a lot of time for investigators to dissect the incident and figure out exactly what happened.
“But again, the why. We may not ever be able to release some of that information,” Sheriff Torgerson said. “Obviously, we are dealing with the juvenile here as the victim here, and we have to respect that as a juvenile, there's some information about that we are not going to release.”
“We have two families (hurting) here that are part of our community,” added Torgerson, “and we have to find a way to help and support them. And sometimes putting additional information out there doesn't help at all in what they're dealing with, so we have to honor and respect that too.”
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