Cleveland shooter had been suspended, made threats

The 14-year-old shot four people at his school, then killed himself.

CLEVELAND (AP) — A 14-year-old suspended student, dressed in black, opened fire in his downtown high school Wednesday, 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 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.”

Coon was armed with two .38-caliber revolvers, and a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and knives was found in a bathroom, police said. Parents were angry that firearms got into a school equipped with metal detectors that students said were intermittently used.

Two teachers and two students were shot, and a 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.

Witnesses said the shooter moved through the converted five-story downtown office building, working his way through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms. He was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted fingernails, police said.

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, didn’t 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.”

LeVert said she hid in a closet with two other students after she heard a “Code Blue” 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.

“It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I was actually shot, when I felt my arm burning in the area, that’s when I realized 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 organization. He did not know how Coon got into the building Wednesday.

Blackwell said that there was a security guard on the first floor but that the position of another guard on the third floor had been eliminated.

Math teacher David Kachadourian, 57, was in good condition; Michael Grassie, a 42-year-old teacher, was in surgery, but his condition was unavailable.

Two of the injured teens were taken to a children’s hospital, which would not release their names, ages or conditions.

Classes at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District will be canceled today, said Eugene Sanders, chief executive officer of the district. Counseling will be available today for students at recreation centers throughout the city, Sanders said.