T.J. LANE
Accused shooter.
SCHOOL HORROR: A state police helicopter leaves Chardon HS near Cleveland yesterday after a student opened fire in the cafeteria, killing two schoolmates. (
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A teenager who tweeted Sunday night that he was going to bring a gun to his suburban Cleveland high school opened fire in its cafeteria yesterday, killing two students and wounding three others.
T.J. Lane’s intended victims were friends of his from earlier grades, one of them said.
But police said they expected a lengthy probe to uncover why he allegedly pulled out a handgun at about 7:30 a.m., the start of the school day at Chardon HS, in a small town about 30 miles east of Cleveland.
Fellow student Evan Erasmus said Lane issued a warning on Twitter Sunday night, but no one who saw it took it seriously.
“I think he said he was going to bring a gun to school and I think everyone just blew it off like he was joking,” she said.
Lane, like many of the other students, was waiting for a bus that would take him to another school. Others were eating breakfast.
Nate Mueller, a junior, said he was at a table with three friends, looking in another direction, when he first heard gunfire.
“My friends were crawling on the floor, and one of my friends was bent over the table, and he was shot,” Mueller told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He himself escaped with a graze to the right ear.
Only one of those slain, junior Daniel Parmentor, 16, was immediately identified.
The gunshots sent students screaming through the halls and barricading themselves in classrooms in a horrifying reminder of the 1999 Columbine HS massacre and other school shootings.
A heroic teacher chased the gunman outside, and Lane was arrested about a half mile from the school.
Another teacher, Joe Ricci, opened his classroom door and pulled in a student, Nick Walczak, who had been shot several times, witnesses said.
Mueller said that back in middle school, Lane was friends with the group of students he targeted, but then they drifted apart.
He also said Lane’s ex-girlfriend recently began dating one of the boys at the table.
Erasmus said of Lane, “He was more of a quiet type of kid. He was really nice, though, if you did talk to him.
“He just came from a really broken-down home and he was living with his grandparents.”
Another student Danny Komertz, 15, said Lane was known as an outcast who had apparently been bullied. Other students disputed that.
“Even though he was quiet, he still had friends,” said Tyler Lillash, 16. “He was not bullied.”
Police said one of the other victims was in critical condition and another was in serious condition.
With AP, Reuters