By DPA
Washington : A 14-year-old student shot at least five people, including two adults and three students at an Ohio school before apparently turning the gun on himself.
Four of the victims were directly shot, and a fifth hurt her knee during the fracas Wednesday at the Success Tech High School, said Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson in broadcast remarks. All were in stable condition.
Jackson said the two adult men – possibly teachers, aged 42 and 57 – were in more serious condition than the two children, aged 14 and 17, who had been shot.
Police said the suspect had entered the school with a gun in each hand and started firing. According to their “best information”, the boy then shot himself before authorities arrived at the scene.
Media reports said the shooter was apparently aggravated over a suspension earlier in the week, but school authorities would only confirm that he was not scheduled to be in the building Wednesday.
The shooting was the latest in a series of violent occurrences at US schools. In April, a disturbed student shot and killed 32 students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia before turning the gun on himself, the worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in US history.
In 1999, two students killed 12 students and a teacher at the Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado, before committing suicide.
Students and parents in the Ohio incident described to US broadcaster CNN how students ran from the gunfire and hid under desks and in closets. The 17-year-old student who had been shot in the arm called his mother to describe how he was hiding.
All Cleveland-area schools will remain closed Thursday, officials said.