A 14 year-old Ohio student shot two students and two teachers on Thursday, Oct. 11. The student, Asa H. Coon, was armed with two revolvers when he entered SuccessTech Academy, an alternative high school of 240 in Cleveland, Ohio.
The school’s 26 surveillance cameras did not detect this. The school’s metal detectors, known to work intermittently, were not working that day. Also, it is believed that a classmate had let Coon into the building, according to Police Chief Michael McGrath. A preliminary investigation report claimed that Coon had entered the school through a five-story adjacent office building. He had changed clothes and possibly retrieved the weapons from a duffel bag inside the fourth-floor bathroom.
One of the students who was shot had punched Coon earlier when he ran into him in the bathroom. Another was walking up the stairs, while other students were fleeing the scene. In Coon’s attempt to find an unspecified teacher, he shot another teacher walking into a classroom, and one other was injured in his attempt to help students off the floor. The wounded teacher remains hospitalized.
Coon had mental health problems and had spent time in two juvenile facilities. He had a juvenile record from a suspension last year because he had tried to harm a student. No further details were revealed.
Coon was not supposed to be in school on the day of the shooting. He had been suspended on Monday of the same week. Students reported that Coon had threatened to stab students and blow up the school. Coon, in Columbine-style, wore black clothes and a t-shirt of Marilyn Manson, who he said he worshiped more than God, and had black-painted fingernails.
The .38-caliber shot shell he fired at students was loaded with pellets. He shot himself after the four shootings in what was ruled a suicide. Coon also had a .22-caliber revolver, a box of ammunition for both guns and three folding knives.
On the “Early Show” last Thursday, a 15 year-old student, Rasheem Smith, said, “I told my friends in the class that he had a gun and stuff. We talked to the principal. She would try to get us all in the office, but it would always be too busy for it to happen.”
School CEO, Eugene Sanders responded to this, saying that the district would be investigating the incident. The city’s spokesperson, Maureen Harper, said that Sanders would be presenting the city’s mayor with a plan for additional security measures to identify problems among the student body. The school principal, Johneita Durant, did not return phone calls or answer messages.
As for security, MSNBC reported the president of SuccessTech’s student-parent organization, Charles Blackwell saying that only one security guard worked because a lack of money prevented the placement of a second one.
