One Dead, Four Hurt In US School Shooting

10:33pm UK, Monday February 27, 2012
One student has died and at least four others have been injured in a high school shooting in the US state of Ohio.

Police said a student had opened fire with a handgun before he was chased from the building by a teacher. The student gunman then gave himself up.

The shooting was reported on Monday morning at Chardon High School in a town around 30 miles east of Cleveland.

The college, which has more than 1,000 students, was put on lockdown and an armed SWAT police team was sent to the scene.

Television images showed armed police on site, and parents and students were seen gathering on the school grounds.

Civil deputy Erin Knife said a single person was suspected of carrying out the attack.

An FBI spokesman said five students had been injured in the shooting and the gunman had been arrested near his car about half a mile (one kilometre) away from the high school. One of the victims has since died.

The dead student was identified as Daniel Parmentor, 16, who studied computer science at a nearby vocational school and was waiting in the cafeteria for a bus when the gunman opened fire.

The Parmenter family released a statement saying: "Danny was a bright young boy who had a bright future ahead of him. The family is torn by this loss."

Daniel Parmenter was one of three victims flown to the trauma centre at MetroHealth Medical Centre in Cleveland, where the other two are in a critical condition and undergoing surgery.

Two others, a 18-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy, were in a serious condition at Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, a suburb of Cleveland.

An eyewitness said she saw the gunman as he opened fire in the cafeteria.

Seventeen-year-old Heather Ziska said at about 7.30am she heard popping sounds coming from the corridor.

She then saw a boy with a gun who she recognised as a fellow student come into the cafeteria and start shooting.

Police have not formally identified the gunman, who is a juvenile, but students speaking to local media said his name was T J Lane.

Police and FBI have surrounded a house on Wilder Road in a rural, wooded area of Chardon identified in public records as belonging to Thomas Lane.

The Ohio shooting is the worst at a US high school in 11 months.

In 2007 a mass shooting at Virginia Tech University left 33 people dead. Another shooting by two gunmen killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School, Colorado in 1999.

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