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'I got something for you all'
11/10/2007 09:20 - (SA)
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| A distraught mother, left, cries after her daughter made it out of the SuccessTech Academy alternative school in Cleveland, Ohio. (Gus Chan, AP) |
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Joe Milicia
Cleveland - A 14-year-old suspended student, dressed in black, opened fire in his downtown high school, wounding four people as terrified schoolmates hid in closets and bathrooms and huddled under laboratory desks. He then killed himself.
A fellow student at SuccessTech Academy alternative school said on Wednesday that Asa H Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, had made threats in front of students and teachers last week.
"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert said. "We didn't think nothing of it."
Armed with two revolvers, Coon fired eight shots on Wednesday and may have targeted teachers, said Police Chief Michael McGrath. Police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom, he said.
Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.
Coon spent time in two juvenile facilities after a domestic violence episode and was also given home detention, according to juvenile court records obtained by The Plain Dealer. He was also suspended from school last year for trying to injure a student, the paper reported.
Officials said two teachers and two students were shot, and that a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.
Working his way up
Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-storey downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted finger nails.
The first person shot, student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face right before the shootings began, said student Rasheem Smith, 15.
Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he (Mike) punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side". Peek, 14, did not know Coon had a gun, Smith said.
Antonio Deberry, 17, said he and his classmates hid under laboratory tables and watched the shooter move down the hallway. "I saw him walking past. He didn't see us, we saw him." The shooter swore and shot several times, Deberry said.
LeVert said she hid in a closet with two other students after she heard an alert over the loudspeaker. She said she heard about 10 shots.
Darnell Rodgers, 18, was walking up to another floor when the stairway suddenly became flooded with students.
Trench coat, black boots and a dog collar
"It took me a couple of minutes to realise that I was actually shot, when I felt my arm burning in the area, that's when I realised that I had got shot," Rodgers said.
Rodgers was released from a hospital after treatment for a graze wound to his right elbow.
Coon had been suspended since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organisation. He did not know how Coon got into the building on Wednesday.
Student Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments with Coon, who once told her, "I got something for you all." He would often wear a trench coat, black boots and a dog collar, she said.
Math teacher David Kachadourian, 57, was in good condition; Michael Grassie, a 42-year-old teacher, was in surgery, but his condition was unavailable. The other two injured teens were taken to a children's hospital, which would not release their names, ages or conditions.
People at Coon's home declined to comment on Wednesday evening.
- AP
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