A teenager opened fire in the cafeteria at a suburban Cleveland high school, killing one student and wounding four others before he was chased from the building by a teacher and captured a short distance away, authorities said.
A student who saw the attack up close on Monday said it appeared that the gunman targeted a group of students sitting together and that the one who was killed was gunned down while trying to duck under the cafeteria table.
A lawyer for the suspect’s family has identified him to a Cleveland television station as T.J. Lane and said Lane’s family is mourning “this terrible loss for their community.”
FBI officials would not comment on a motive and Chardon police chief Tim McKenna said authorities “have a lot of homework to do yet” in their investigation of the shootings, which sent students screaming through the halls at the start of the school day at 1,100-student Chardon High School.
An education official said the suspected shooter is a Lake Academy student, not a student at Chardon High. Brian Bontempo declined to answer any questions about the student. Bontempo is the superintendent of the Lake County Educational Service Center, which operates the academy.
The alternative school in Willoughby serves seventh through 12th grades. Students may have been referred to the school because of academic or behavioral problems.
The FBI said the suspect was arrested near his car 800m from Chardon. He was not immediately charged.
Teachers locked down their classrooms as they had been trained to do during drills and students took cover as they waited for the all-clear in this town of 5,100 people, 50km from Cleveland. One teacher was said to have dragged a wounded student into his classroom to protect him. Another chased the gunman out of the building, police said.
Long before official word came of the attack, parents learned of the bloodshed from students via text message and cellphone and thronged the streets around the school, anxiously awaiting word on their children.
Two of the wounded were listed in critical condition and another was in serious condition.
“I looked up and this kid was pointing a gun about 10 feet [3m] away from me to a group of four kids sitting at a table,” Komertz said.
He said the gunman fired two shots quickly and students scrambled for safety. One of them was “trying to get underneath the table, trying to hide, protecting his face.”
The slain student, Daniel Parmertor, was an aspiring computer repairman who was waiting in the cafeteria for the bus for his daily 15-minute ride to a vocational school.
Teacher Joe Ricci had just begun class when he heard shots and slammed the door to his classroom, yelling, “Lockdown!” to students, according to Karli Sensibello, a student whose sister was in Ricci’s classroom.
A few minutes later, Ricci heard a student moaning outside, opened the door and pulled in student Nick Walczak who had been shot several times, Sensibello said in an e-mail. Ricci comforted Walczak and let him use his cellphone to call his girlfriend and parents, Sensibello said. She said her sister was too upset to talk.
Text messages started flying inside and outside the school, spreading information about what was happening and what friends and family were hearing outside the building.
“We all have cellphones, so people were constantly giving people updates — about what was going on, who the victims were, how they were doing,” Moser said.
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