MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – A tribal chairman’s teenage son was sentenced Friday for exchanging threatening messages with the gunman in last year’s shootings on the Red Lake Indian reservation, but the closed hearing frustrated victims’ family members.

Louis Jourdain’s father, Floyd Jourdain Jr., would not disclose the nature of the 17-year-old’s sentence, but his comments suggested it wasn’t severe.

“The judge’s ruling will reflect what I’ve maintained all along … my son is a good kid,” the elder Jourdain said, adding that his son “feels extremely terrible about what happened at Red Lake.”

Attorneys left the Minneapolis federal court without commenting.

A judge barred victims of the shooting or their survivors from the closed juvenile proceedings, ruling that they were not victims of the crime for which Jourdain was being sentenced and that the proceedings would not answer their questions about the March 21, 2005, rampage.

Jeff Weise, 16, killed his grandfather and the man’s companion, then headed to Red Lake High School, where he killed five students, a teacher and a security guard before killing himself in the worst school shooting since Columbine.

Jourdain was once accused of conspiring with Weise, and not knowing his punishment or other details frustrated victims’ family members, including Francis Brun, whose 28-year-old son, Derrick, was the security guard killed.

“It’s a double whammy for those of us that are victims, that have been denied the right to gather information about how our family member died and whether there was any evidence … that may have given a rundown of Louie’s involvement with Jeff Weise,” Brun said.

Jourdain admitted last fall that he made threatening interstate communications, a crime that can carry up to five years in prison.

Floyd Jourdain said earlier that authorities examined hundreds of computer messages between his son and Weise, and said some of them may have been seen as threatening or inappropriate. He has said his son admitted to “wrongheaded and inappropriate use of the Internet, but he does not accept responsibility for the 10 lives lost at Red Lake on March 21 because he is not responsible.”

A court docket released in November, some of it blacked out, said the younger Jourdain used a computer to conduct interstate communications that “could be taken by an objective observer as threatening” sometime between Jan. 1, 2003, and March 2005.

The sentencing hearing was closed despite efforts by shooting victims and the media to make it public. Prosecutors told family members of victims they were prohibited from talking about the sentence, the families said.

Some of those at the courthouse Friday directed their frustration at Floyd Jourdain, who isn’t subject to any such restrictions.

“I don’t understand why he can’t come and tell us,” said LeeAnn Thunder, whose son Steven Cobenais was shot in the face in Weise’s attack. “I mean, it was closed upstairs, but he’s walking out right now, so why can’t he tell us?”

A law firm representing several of the families issued a statement saying it was asking too much of those families to “blindly accept the outcome of a prosecution which was conducted entirely in secret.”

Cobenais, a sophomore, was already in Minneapolis for a medical appointment to be fitted for a prosthetic eye.

The 16-year-old said he held Louis Jourdain partly responsible for the shootings and hoped he would go to prison “because of what he did to us kids and all of our friends.”

On Friday, Floyd Jourdain said again that his son never meant to hurt anyone.

“This entire ordeal has been extremely difficult for my family and the Red Lake Band in general,” he said.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger plans to meet with the families of Weise’s victims on Jan. 30, but he said Friday that he will not reveal the sentencing.

Heffelfinger also said that although the judge reminded Floyd Jourdain that the sentencing is a confidential matter, the court has no authority over the chairman.

AP-ES-01-13-06 1755EST

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