best when viewed in low light

10.10.2007

End It All!

No, really. Just close all the schools, stop torturing the children, and let them learn.
Or they'll just go crazy and kill everyone.

From the NYT:

October 10, 2007

Gunman Opens Fire at Cleveland High School

A student opened fire inside a Cleveland high school today, shooting and wounding several people and creating moments of sheer terror for students, school officials and parents. He then apparently shot and killed himself, The Associated Press reported, citing police officials.

Mayor Frank Jackson said the injured included two male students and two male adults, who suffered gunshot wounds, and a 14-year old girl who hurt her knee while trying to escape the chaos that erupted in the school as word of the shootings spread.

"All the children are in stable, good condition," Mr. Jackson said outside the school, SuccessTech Academy, in downtown Cleveland, referring to the injured. He added that the two injured adults were in a more "elevated" condition.

"They have the shooter," he said of the police, who descended on the school shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time. In his brief remarks to reporters, the mayor provided few other details about the shooter, or about how the incident ended.

The Cleveland television station WOIO-19 and other local news media reported that the gunman may have been a 14-year-old student, and that he died after a brief manhunt by police inside the school, which is housed on several floors of an office building on Lakeside Avenue.

Several students and parents told reporters that the shooter had recently been suspended from the school, and returned today with weapons.

“The student had two guns, one in each hand, and fired them both while walking down the hallway,” Channel 19 reported.

Televised scenes outside the school showed dozens of police cars, SWAT team members running in and terrified parents being reunited with their children coming out of the school. Gurneys were seen being wheeled out of the school and loaded into ambulances.

One student told The A.P. that she heard the principal say “Code Blue” over the public address system, and that prompted students to start running. Others said that word of the violence spread quickly from student to student in cellphone calls and text messages.

Doneisha LeVert said she hid in a closet in the building with some of her friends, The A.P. reported.

Ronnell Jackson, 15, told the news agency that he had ducked out of the door of the school when he saw the shooter running down the hall.

“He was about to shoot me, but I got out just in time,” he said. “He was aiming at me — I got out just in time.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on its web site that city police were called to the school at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time and that paramedics were summoned to Room 310, where one person was shot, and to Room 415, where another was shot in the lower chest.

SuccessTech is a nontraditional public high school whose mission, according to its web site, is “Problem-based service learning with an emphasis on technology.”

It occupies the third, fourth and fifth floors in a sprawling building that also houses some administrative offices. The school building is near the city’s police headquarters.

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