How many times will warning signs be ignored?


How many times will
warning signs be ignored?

“He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody. We didn’t think nothing of it.”

The speaker was a classmate of the 14-year-old Cleveland boy who wounded two teachers and two students before taking his own life at Success Tech Academy, a Cleveland alternative school.

It’s easy to forgive a high school student the use of a double negative. And it is understandable this particular student was reluctant to report what she knew about Asa H. Coon to authorities. But it is impossible to overlook the failure of school authorities to do more than they did to avert what could have been a tragedy of massive proportions in Cleveland Wednesday.

It’s sad that a troubled 14-year-old boy is dead by his own hand. And it is lucky that none of the wounds inflicted on the other four were life threatening. Perhaps Coon was capable of arming himself and getting inside the school with a bag containing two handguns, ammunition and three knives, but lacked the killer instinct exhibited eight years ago by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine High School.

But that Coon could get anywhere near to wreaking havoc is, simply, inexcusable. Cleveland city school officials have a lot of explaining to do.

Warning signs

In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech just six months ago, reams were written about the warning signs that were ignored about Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people. It is difficult to believe that any school administrator at any level would have forgotten the lessons of Virginia Tech so soon.

And yet, the Associated Press reports that not only were some of Coon’s classmates aware of his threats, some of them actually went to the principal to express their concerns.

Under those circumstances, after Coon was suspended from school for fighting with another student, there is simply no way that he should have been able to re-enter the school during the period of the suspension, much less re-enter carrying a satchel full of weapons.

It is not as if Success Tech is a huge institution. It is a school of fewer than 300 students. And it is not as if Coons, given to wearing the clothes, jewelry and nail polish of the Goth subculture was hard to spot in a crowd.

There will always be troubled young people who are pushed to their breaking point and do violent things to others and to themselves. Some of them will fall through the cracks and the extent to which they are troubled will be recognized only in retrospect.

But that should not have been the case with Asa Coons. His resentments, his predilections toward violent and his anti-social behavior was well known to authorities, family and classmates. If there is an excuse for his getting himself and his weapons inside school Wednesday, we’d like to hear it. Absent that excuse, we believe the person or persons who failed to react to the clear danger her represented should beheld to account.

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