US high school shooting claims third student

A third student has died following yesterday's shooting at a school in Ohio.

Sixteen-year-old Demetrius Hewlin died from his injuries in the early hours of this morning.

Two other injured students remain in hospital.

The teenage suspect in the high school shootings is due before a court later on today.

He opened fire in the cafeteria of the school, killing one student and injuring four others before he was chased from the building by a teacher and captured a short distance away, authorities said.

A student who witnessed the attack near Cleveland, Ohio, 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 a cafeteria table.

A lawyer for the suspect’s family identified him to a Cleveland television station as TJ Lane and said his family was mourning “this terrible loss for their community”.

FBI officials would not comment on a motive. And 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.

Brian Bontempo, superintendent of the Lake County Educational Service Centre, said the suspected gunman is a Lake Academy student, not a student at Chardon High, but declined to answer any further questions about him.

The alternative school in Willoughby serves students aged between 12 and 18 who may have been referred because of academic or behavioural problems.

The FBI said the suspect was arrested near his car half a mile (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 the town of 5,100 people, 30 miles (50m) 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.

Fifteen-year-old Danny Komertz, who witnessed the shooting, said Lane was known as an outcast who had apparently been bullied. But others disputed that.

“Even though he was quiet, he still had friends,” said Tyler Lillash, 16. “He was not bullied.”

Robert Farinacci, a lawyer who is representing Lane and his family, told WKYC-TV that the teenager “pretty much sticks to himself but does have some friends and has never been in trouble over anything that we know about”.

Long before official word came of the attack, parents learned of the bloodshed from students via text message and mobile phone calls and thronged the streets around the school, anxiously awaiting news about their children.

“I looked up and this kid was pointing a gun about 10ft (3m) away from me to a group of four kids sitting at a table,” Danny 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”.

One of the dead students, Daniel Parmertor, was an aspiring computer repairman who was waiting in the cafeteria for the bus for his daily 15-minute journey to a vocational school.

His teacher at the Auburn Career School had no idea why Daniel, described as “a very good young man, very quiet”, had been targeted, said Auburn superintendent Maggie Lynch.

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 Mr Ricci’s class.

A few minutes later, Mr Ricci heard a student moaning outside, opened the door and pulled in student Nick Walczak who had been shot several times, Karli said in an email. Mr Ricci comforted Nick and let him use his mobile phone to call his girlfriend and parents, Karli added. She said her sister was too upset to talk.

Heather Ziska, 17, said she was in the cafeteria when she saw a boy she recognised as a fellow student come in and start shooting. She said she and several others immediately ran outside, while other friends ran into a middle school and others locked themselves in a teachers’ lounge.

“Everybody just started running,” said 17-year-old Megan Hennessy, who was in class when she heard loud noises. “Everyone was running and screaming down the hallway.”

Mr Farinacci said Lane’s family was “devastated” by the shootings and they offered “their most heartfelt and sincere condolences” to Daniel Parmertor’s family and the families of the wounded students.

“This is something that could never have been predicted,” he told WKYC-TV.

Rebecca Moser, 17, had just settled into her chemistry class when the school went into lockdown. The class of about 25 students ducked behind the lab tables at the back of the classroom, uncertain whether it was a drill.

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,” she said.

The school had no metal detectors, but current and past students said it had frequent security drills in case of a shooting.