MARINETTE, Wis. - By all accounts, Samuel Hengel was a nice kid.
Good student, loved to hunt and fish, well-liked, a Boy Scout, even-keeled, plenty of friends, loving family.
What motivated the 15-year-old sophomore to bring two semiautomatic handguns and a duffel bag filled with ammunition and a knife to his sixth-hour social studies class, hold his classmates and teacher hostage for about six hours and then shoot himself in the head will likely remain a mystery.
Hengel died Tuesday morning at a Green Bay hospital without revealing a motive.
"We may never truly know why this happened," Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey said.
On Tuesday authorities revealed more details about what went on inside the basement classroom after a couple of dozen students gathered for Valerie Burd's sixth-hour class. Sometime after the 1:30 p.m. class started, Hengel asked to go to the bathroom.
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He returned carrying a duffel bag. Inside were two semiautomatic handguns - 9 mm and .22-caliber. He fired two or three shots, including a shot into a video projector.
Then Hengel collected everyone's cell phones so they couldn't contact anyone.
Students showing up for Burd's seventh-hour class saw a note on the door directing them to the library. Apparently no one heard the initial shots.
Eventually a parent who had been trying to reach his daughter by phone alerted the principal, who then discovered the hostages.
Hengel refused to talk to negotiators, using the teacher to do so.
Students said Hengel was mostly calm and talked with them, at times joking and bantering, and they told investigators they didn't feel threatened by him.
After he fired three more shots inside the classroom, police moved in. While some officers surrounded the students, others moved toward Hengel, who then shot himself. No one else was injured.

