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Marinette – A 15-year-old boy who held 24 classmates and his teacher hostage for more than five hours at Marinette High School died Tuesday morning from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Samuel O. Hengel was pronounced dead at 10:44 a.m. at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Green Bay. Hengel shot himself in the head as officers stormed the classroom around 8 p.m. Monday.

Hengel’s death leaves behind questions that will probably never be answered – why would an outwardly nice boy and good student bring two semiautomatic handguns and a duffel bag filled with ammunition and a knife to his social studies class?

“He’s the one person who could answer the ‘why?’ question,” said Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey.

Classes are expected to resume Wednesday at the high school of 700 students.

Superintendent Timothy Baneck said “thank goodness we did not have a sadder conclusion.”

An autopsy was ordered.

Earlier Monday, Police Chief Jeff Skorik said more ammunition was found in a duffel bag and in Hengel's pockets at Bay Area Medical Center where he was taken Monday night after shooting himself as police stormed the classroom.

In addition, five or six shell casings were discovered in the classroom afterward. Hengel fired a few shots before police arrived shortly before 4 p.m. and three more shots inside the classroom at 8:03 p.m. That’s when police stormed the classroom and saw Hengel in one area of the room with the rest of the hostages at the opposite side of the room. None of the hostages was injured.

The earlier shots had been fired into a desk and audio visual equipment in the room.

It’s unknown how Hengel got the weapons or how he brought them into the school.

“He may be the only one who can answer those questions,” said Skorik.

Although Hengel refused to talk to police and hostage negotiators, he allowed the teacher, Valerie Burd, to have unfettered access with authorities. She kept in touch with police and described what was happening in the basement classroom.

Burd “was nothing short of heroic. She kept a very cool head and kept the suspect as calm as possible,” said Skorik. “We really give that teacher a lot of credit.”

The police chief said had it not been for Burd's actions, it’s possible the hostage situation could have ended differently.

Officials tried to establish contact with Hengel but were forced to relay instructions through phone conversations with Burd.

“The longer the time went on I became concerned that we weren’t able to establish communications direct with the hostage-taker,” said Skorik. “Really we can do our best work if we can establish a one-on-one relationship with the hostage taker. When we couldn’t evaluate his motive it was hard to defuse the situation.”

Police are unaware of any precipitating incidents that made Hengel snap.

Hengel had “a clean slate,” and nothing in his background or experience is providing any clues to what led to Monday's events, said School Superintendent Timothy Baneck.

Hengel showed up for sixth-hour social studies class, which starts around 1 p.m.

At some point during that class, Hengel asked Burd if he could go to the bathroom. He then "went to his locker, we suspect, and brought the bag back to the classroom,” said Baneck.

Inside the duffel bag was ammunition and two semiautomatic handguns, a 9-millimeter and .22-caliber, said Chief Skorik.

When students for Burd’s seventh-period class showed up, they saw a note on the door telling them to go to the library to study.

When asked whether the students in Burd’s sixth-period class were missed when they didn’t show up for their seventh-period classes – there are seven periods in the class day – Baneck said they were.

“That was really the first start, starting to pull pieces of the puzzle together that something may not be right,” the superintendent said.

Marinette High School Principal Corry Lambie said he learned there was a problem when a parent came to the school after 3 p.m. and said she had been calling his daughter’s cell phone. The daughter hadn’t answered.

When Lambie walked into the classroom at about 3:45 p.m., Hengel pointed a gun at him and calmly told him to leave the room. Hengel was at the podium and the teacher was at her desk. The students were in seats that were arranged like a fan around the room, Lambie said. The students’ cell phones were on the floor.

“I walked in and the student was allowed to leave as I backed out,” Lambie said.

Lambie made the 911 call at 3:48 p.m.

Baneck, who has been superintendent for the district for only a year, did not know how long Burd has worked at Marinette High School but said she was a veteran teacher. Burd is being lauded as a hero for keeping the hostage-taker calm, relaying information from police to the student and looking after the other students.

Skorik didn’t know how Hengel could fire a couple of shots without anyone noticing but speculated that the classroom is in the basement and farther away from other classrooms or that few students were in the area to hear shooting.

While Hengel was holding his classmates and teacher hostage throughout the afternoon and night, he didn’t make any demands and he refused to talk to authorities. When five students asked to leave to go to the bathroom at 7:40 p.m. he told them they could go.

“No demands, no requests made. At times the student was described as quiet and solemn,” said Skorik.

“We always hope we can resolve the situation without any injuries, but it’s difficult when you can’t talk to the suspect.”

Hengel’s father was cooperative and spoke to detectives at the police station but was not involved in any hostage negotiations.



Twenty minutes after the five students left, Hengel fired three shots inside the room. That’s when police breached the room and Hengel shot himself.

After the duffel bag was found with ammunition as well as a cell phone, authorities called in the Brown County Sheriff’s bomb squad to X-ray the bag and check for any incendiary devices that might have been brought into the school. A bomb-sniffing dog was also called in. Nothing else was found at Marinette High School.

The Wisconsin Crime Lab is reconstructing the events inside the room, trajectory of bullets, a timeline and the location of the student when shots were fired.

Marinette County’s district attorney was on the scene Monday night and will review reports Tuesday before making any charging decisions.

The police said Hengel did not have a juvenile criminal record. The boy was described as a good student and well liked and authorities are baffled as to why he would bring guns to school and take his classmates hostage.

Keith Schroeder, a former Marinette middle school teacher, said he had Hengel as a student and also knows the boy's teacher well. He said Hengel's family is extremely involved in all their boys' lives.

"He's a fine young man and I'm totally taken aback," Schroeder said. "Surprised, flabbergasted to say the least because this is a great family. It doesn't fit any of the things or the molds that you read about people. I couldn't say enough good things about the family."

Marinette High School remained closed Tuesday as investigators treated the classroom as a crime scene.

Chief Skorik said Hengel was "even keeled" and "well liked" and police haven't identified anything that would have made him snap.

"What caused this is a mystery."

District Attorney Allen Brey said investigators may never know the motive.

“He’s the one person who could answer the why question. We’ll all speculate. We’ll all wonder,” Brey said. “The one guy who could give us those answers is gone.”

A SWAT team had arrived at the school Monday evening, City Council member Bradley Behrendt said from the scene, about 50 miles north of Green Bay.

"I would say there's over 100 officers here, everyone from Marinette County, Green Bay . . . It's very shocking," Behrendt said. "They just spent a whole bundle of money on classroom doors to make them secure, but they don't have metal detectors at the school."

Choral teacher Bonita Weydt said she was talking with a teacher in another classroom after school, which lets out about 3:10 p.m., when the principal came in.

"I said, 'Corry, what's going on?' and he said, 'Get out of the building,' " Weydt said.

Officials said parents were asked to gather at the Marinette County Courthouse, where school officials and mental health counselors were meeting with families and reviewing a class roster.

Indications are the crisis began well before authorities were notified.

Dan Kitkowski, regional editor for the Marinette Eagle Herald and the parent of a Marinette High School senior, told a Journal Sentinel reporter that the situation unfolded during a sixth-period Western Civilization class that began between 1:30 and 2 p.m.

Student Zach Campbell told The Associated Press that he and his classmates had been watching a film about Greek myths at the end of the school day when Hengel pulled out a gun and shot the projector. He then fired another shot.

"It was a very scary event," Campbell said. Hengel made students put their cell phones in the middle of the room and broke his own phone when it rang. The class then spent about six hours talking to him about hunting and fishing.

"We just wanted to be on his good side," Campbell said. He said Hengel seemed depressed. "But he didn't really seem like he wanted to hurt anybody."

Speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America," student Austin Biehl said the teacher asked Hengel why he was holding them hostage. "He just said ‘no,’ that he didn't want anything, didn’t want any help," said Biehl, who was so scared that his legs were shaking.

Kitkowski's daughter and other students enrolled in the class the following period were turned away at the door to the classroom by the teacher, who told them to go to the school's library.

"She (the teacher) looked a little nervous, but nobody thought anything of it," Kitkowski said.

His daughter returned to the classroom after school to retrieve some homework but found the door locked, he said.

It wasn't until she got outside and saw police and firefighters arriving that she found out about the situation in the classroom, Kitkowski said.

While the high school, which has an enrollment of 700, was closed Tuesday, other schools in the district remained open.

No metal detectors were in use at the school at the time of the incident. The police chief said metal detectors were used to check bags and students several years ago – he estimated it was six to eight years ago – after a rash of bomb threats at the high school.

The principal said he plans to open the school Wednesday.

“We understand that there is a fear factor we must overcome,” he said. “Students at MHS are safe. The only unfortunate part is we lost a student yesterday.”

Marinette, a town of about 12,000 people, sits on the border with Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The high school has an enrollment of about 700 students.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.