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"I
never felt personally threatened or personally at risk,"
Kachadourian said after leaving the hospital. "I
had concerns about him, yes. He seemed like an angry
young man. I did not fear for my own safety."
Police
found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three
knives in a bathroom but found no suicide note, McGrath
said.
Parents
were angry that firearms got into a school equipped
with metal detectors that students said were intermittently
used.
Coon
spent time in two juvenile facilities after a domestic
violence episode and was given home detention, and he
was suspended from school last year for trying to injure
a student, according to juvenile court records obtained
by The Plain Dealer. He had a history of mental health
problems and threatened to commit suicide last year
while in a mental health center, the paper reported.
"That's
the most basic, profound and saddest part of the whole
thing, knowing he was in so much pain and torment,"
Kachadourian said. "Anytime someone takes his own
life, it shows he was desperate."
Officials
said two teachers and two students were shot, and that
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 up through
the first two floors of administrative offices to the
third floor of classrooms. Officials said he was wearing
a Marilyn Manson concert shirt, black jeans and black-painted
finger nails.
Police
released audio from three 911 calls — two from
students who had fled the building after the first two
shots and one from a distraught mother, calling on behalf
of her son, who was huddled in the back of a fourth
floor classroom.
"They
just shot somebody in his room!" the crying mother
told the dispatcher.
The
first person shot, 14-year-old 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," 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." The shooter swore and shot several times,
Deberry said.
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.
"They
were screaming, and they were saying, 'Oh my God, oh
my God.' I knew something was wrong, but thought that
it was probably just a fight, so I just kept going,"
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.
Student
Frances Henderson, 14, said she often got into arguments
with Coon, who once told her, "I got something
for you all." He would often wear a trench coat,
black boots and a dog collar, she said.
Students
stood outside the building, many in tears, hugging one
another and on cell phones. Others shouted at reporters
with TV cameras to leave them alone. Family members
also stood outside, waiting for their children to be
released.
Michael
Grassie, a 42-year-old history teacher, was in fair
condition at Metro Health Medical Center after about
two hours of surgery. The hospital would not disclose
the nature of the surgery.
The
other two injured teens were taken to a children's hospital,
which would not release their names, ages or conditions.
People
at Coon's home declined to comment Wednesday evening.
Deberry's
mother, Lakisha Deberry, said she was upset that metal
detectors at the school were not always in use.
"You
never know what's going on in someone's mind,"
said Deberry, adding that she was required to go through
a metal detector and present an identification card
whenever she wanted to drop off something at school
for her children.
Students
were being sent to the FBI office across the street.
Classes
at all schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School
District will be canceled Thursday, said Eugene Sanders,
chief executive officer of the district. Counseling
will be available Thursday for students at recreation
centers throughout the city, Sanders said.
SuccessTech
Academy is an alternative high school in the public
school district that stresses technology and entrepreneurship
for about 240 students, most of them black, with a small
number of white and Hispanic students. It opened five
years ago and ranks in the middle of the state's ratings
for student performance. Its graduation rate is 94 percent,
well above the district's rate of 55 percent.
"It's
a shining beacon for the Cleveland Metropolitan School
system," said John Zitzner, founder and president
of E City Cleveland, a nonprofit group aimed at teaching
business skills to inner-city teens. "It's orderly,
it's disciplined, it's calm, it's focused."
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