THOMAS J. SHEERAN Associated Press Writer CLEVELAND
A gunman who opened fire at his high school, injuring four people and killing himself, was holding two revolvers and wearing an angry look when he burst into class, a wounded teacher said. “Now what have you got to say to me?” Asa Coon said after entering Michael Grassie’s class. Then, the teenager waived off a student and shot Grassie, the teacher recalled Monday. “I remember the expression on Asa’s face,” Grassie said. “Anger, total anger. Real hatred. It’s something I haven’t seen on a 14-year-old’s face before.” SuccessTech Academy, closed since Wednesday’s shootings, was to reopen today amid heightened security. There will be metal detectors and at least one more armed security guard at the alternative high school, which stresses technology and entrepreneurship for highachieving students, The Plain Dealer reported. Grassie, 42, sat in a wheelchair at a hospital before being discharged and recounted the rampage. He was shot in the abdomen by Coon, who also wounded another teacher and two students. Grassie said Coon was doing poorly in his world history class and risked failing. “I know that made him really mad,” he said. He said he had called Coon’s home because Coon was talking in class, but the teacher was unable to reach the boy’s mother. The father lives out-of-state, police said. The teacher said Coon had tried to pick a fight with him a week before the shooting. “He tried to goad me,” said Grassie, who had no explanation for why Coon might try to pick a fight. When Coon entered his classroom, Grassie was working with another student on homework and other assignments. Coon looked at the other student and said, “You, you’re cool, man,” as if to assure him he wasn’t at risk. Grassie said Coon’s behavior problems, which he said had led to plans by the school administration to transfer Coon to another school, should have been a sign of possible trouble. “All the warning signs were there,” he said. “Nobody picked up on them.” Grassie criticized the lack of security at the school a lone guard and an occasional metal detector and said a permanent metal detector would have identified anyone entering school with a weapon. He said teachers had pressed for years to get a guard assigned to patrol the upper floors of the converted office building that houses the school’s classrooms. School officials have repeatedly said they were trying to determine how Coon entered the building and said tapes from 26 cameras were checked to determine what happened. A message seeking comment was left at school offices Monday. School officials said last week the 50,000-student district, with 110 buildings, would install metal detectors in each school and make sure a guard is on duty in every building. The other wounded teacher and wounded students were released from hospitals last week. A third student injured her knee in a fall while fleeing the rampage.
