[QODLink]
Americas
Four wounded in US school shooting
Suspended student goes on rampage with two revolvers before killing himself.
Last Modified: 11 Oct 2007 07:37 GMT
A student killed 32 people at the Virginia
Tech university in April [Reuters]
A 14-year-old student has shot and wounded four people at a school in Cleveland, US, before shooting himself dead.
 
Asa Coon, who was suspended for fighting two days earlier, fired eight shots at the SuccessTech Academy alternative school on Wednesday, wounding two teachers and two students.
"He's crazy. He threatened to blow up our school. He threatened to stab everybody," Doneisha LeVert, a fellow student, said.
Officials said the student, who was dressed in black with black-painted finger nails, walked through the school armed with two revolvers as terrified students hid in cupboards and under tables.
 
Parents angered
 
One student, 18-year-old Darnell Rodgers, said: "I felt my arm burning ... [and] realised I had got shot."
 
He was taken to hospital and treated for a wound to his right elbow.
 
Coon is reported to have made threats in front of students and teachers a week ago.
 
Parents have been angered by the fact firearms had been brought into the school despite it being equipped with metal detectors, but students said the machines were only used intermittently.
 
The incident comes just months after a student killed 32 people in Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg.
 
The first person to be shot, student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face before the shootings began, said student Rasheem Smith.
 
SuccessTech Academy is a high school in the public school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship.
Topics in this article
People
Organisation
Featured on Al Jazeera
An unflinching portrait of physical labour in the 21st century.
The stark choice between a fascist or an imperialist course in Syria should be discarded for a third and better course.
Israel's propaganda machine carefully chooses its words to assert illegal ownership over Jerusalem and Palestine.
As Western fears grow over Iran's continuing nuclear programme, we ask how a military strike could impact the region.
Error processing SSI file