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'Student' in Ohio school rampage

A 14-year-old student has shot himself dead after going on a shooting spree at his school in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio, the city's mayor has said.

Mayor Frank Jackson said five people were wounded when the teenager entered the SuccessTech Academy and walked down a corridor on the fourth floor firing.

Two teenage boys and two adults were shot while a teenage girl injured her knee while fleeing, Mr Jackson said.

Local media reported the attacker had been unhappy at having been suspended.

The SuccessTech Academy is a 250-student alternative high school that specialises in business and technology.

It is based on several floors of the Lakeside Avenue administration building in the city centre.

At a news conference, Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said his force's initial investigation indicated that the 14-year-old boy had killed himself before police arrived and that he had at least two guns.

Mr McGrath said video surveillance would allow them to determine how long the gunman was in the school before the shooting, but the student is believed to have arrived early on Wednesday morning.

The main scene of the shooting on the 4th floor of the Lakeside Avenue building is still being processes by the city's coroner's office, he added.

Witnesses reported having seen the shooter roam through school corridors with a gun in each hand.

Ronnell Jackson, 15, told the Associated Press that he saw the attacker running down a hallway.

"He was aiming at me, I got out just in time," he said.

Some students and staff fled after hearing shots and an alert on the school public address system. Others attempted to hide in cupboards or under desks.

Afterwards, shaken students and worried relatives stood outside the building waiting for news.

One student told Philadelphia Channel 6 Action News that the student was a goth and had been wearing a trenchcoat, boots and a chain.

"When he got suspended, he said 'I got something for y'all'," she added.

Schools closed

Cleveland's mayor said those injured in the shooting included two teenage boys aged 14 and 17, who were both in a "stable, good condition".

A 57-year-old man and a 42-year-old man were hurt slightly more seriously and are in "a little elevated condition", Mayor Jackson said.

"The families of all of the victims have been notified, and we are currently connecting all the children and parents with people who can help them through this," he added.

The chief executive of the Cleveland Municipal School District, Eugene Sanders, announced that all the school's activities had been cancelled until Monday.

All public schools in Cleveland will be closed on Thursday, he said, so that students and teachers can "take a breather" and "put this in perspective".

Shock

Joanne DeMarco, president of the Cleveland Teachers' Union, said she was surprised at the shooting.

"Schools are supposed to be safe places, safe places. And you know, it's not that Cleveland's immune to anything that's going on in the nation, but SuccessTech would have been the last place we would have thought of," she said.

Responding to reports that a teenage student may have been responsible, a reader from Cleveland told the BBC News website that the school had been getting good results.

"It's a shame one kid has spoiled all that... and an even bigger shame that due to budget cuts the security the school needed wasn't in place," she said.

Several parents have complained in interviews with local media that the school had recently denied requests to hire a security guard.

The incident comes six months after the US suffered its worst ever campus shooting, when a gunman killed more than 30 students and staff at Virginia Tech.

"It's a shame one kid has spoiled all that... and an even bigger shame that due to budget cuts the security the school needed wasn't in place," she said.

Several parents have complained in interviews with local media that the school had recently denied requests to hire a security guard.

DSG2k wrote:
Not to offer recriminations, but when faced with budget cuts the thing they ought not have neglected was security. I'm against budgets of schools being cut, and I certainly understand that if it happens one should attempt to maintain academic integrity, but ditching security altogether was clearly not the best choice, especially if no one else on campus can legally be armed.

Incidentally, any time there's a high-profile killing with a firearm like this, anti-gun folks will decry America's Second Amendment and the evil 'gun culture'. The problem with that is that in both the case of Virginia Tech and this kid, the guns were illegally possessed by killers who were free to rampage in gun-free areas. Making more gun-free areas, even big ones, will not help. (And even if it reduces gun crime, murderous savages will only result to other means . . . hence knife ban talk in the UK, and even attempts to ban glass.)

So please stop trying to turn the tragic events into political nonsense.

DSG2k wrote:So please stop trying to turn the tragic events into political nonsense.

Mikey wrote:What type of game do you hunt? And, do they have ranged weapons to try and shoot back? If not, then I say it's only sporting to try and take out your quarry hand-to-hand (or hoof, or claw...)

Monroe wrote:I was in the military so yes, the game shoots back.

Captain Seafort wrote:In the more remote areas of the US, for example (upstate New York, Washington state, etc) heavy firepower is required. Unless anyone thinks a .22 handgun will stop a charging bear in its tracks.