Lawyer says suspected shooter is “distraught, remorseful”
Top news coming in to San Francisco and being talked about from the streets of Hunters Point to the soaring towers of Pacific Heights is on the Cleveland, Ohio high school shooting.
A student, T.J. Lane, fired on a group of students sitting in a cafeteria waiting for a bus to take them to a vocational center.
According to newser.com, Lane was a student at a school for at-risk children, while his male victims were vocational students at another school nearby. Those students were waiting to be bused to their vocational school.
Five students were injured in that shooting and two have now died.
“It makes you wonder if the shooter, T.J. Lane, was another victim of bullying,” says San Francisco resident, Donal Witham.
But some dispute any connection to him being bullied.
“Even though he was quiet, he still had friends,” said Tyler Lillash, age 16, according to newser.com. “He was not bullied.”
T.J. Lane was a student at Lake Academy, he was not a student at Chardon High but that’s where he carried out the shootings.
Now, according to newser.com, a second student, Russell King Jr., 17, has been declared brain dead as a result of the shooting. He was shot yesterday by Lane at the Chardon High School in Ohio, says the Wall Street Journal. According to KTVU Channel 2 News in San Francisco, King was “gunned down while trying to duck under the cafeteria table.”
Russell King Jr. had only recently begun to date the shooter’s ex-girlfriend.
The first victim of the shooting, Daniel Parmerto, age 16, died of his injuries yesterday.
Three other high school students were injured in the shooting when TJ Lane, age 17, opened fire, “directly aiming” at a cafeteria table where four boys were sitting.
One witness said to the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the shooter was only “two feet away.” The news source says that Lane allegedly walked up to the boys and shot them “in the backs of their heads.”
Lane is “very distraught” and “extremely remorseful,” says the boy’s lawyer. “He’s very confused. … This is a very scary circumstance that I don’t think he could have possibly even foreseen himself in the middle of.”
As a result of the shooting the school was put on lockdown yesterday. One teacher helped a student into his classroom when he heard him moaning outside.
Police are looking into the Facebook posting Lane made on 30th December, 2011, says CNN.
That posting talks about a man who “was better than the rest, all those ones he detests, within their castles, so vain,” and finishes up with the warning: “Die, all of you.” Police tell reporters that Lane’s father also has a violent past.
See the video on the left-hand side on the press conference in Chardon, OH
Sources: newser.com and KTVU Channel 2 News
