1 dead, 4 injured in NE Ohio school shooting:

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the school shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio. I waited to do this post until the suspect was named. I’ll get to that in a little bit.

At 7:40am local time, a gunman opened fire in the school’s cafeteria, striking 5 students, 4 male and 1 female. Since the story first broke, one of the male students has died from his injuries. The 17-year-old suspect later surrendered to two civilians about a half of a mile from the school.

The suspect has been identified by witnesses as T.J. Lane. Lane is said to have posted the above picture to Twitter and the Chatroulette-like site Omegle on Sunday. Another one of the pics, which you can see here courtesy of Steve Huff, allegedly shows Lane holding up a piece of paper with yesterday’s date and the name of the high school on it. And of course, some media outlets are already saying that he was bullied. I’ll reserve judgment on that until I hear more, but I am always skeptical of those claims because in most school shooting cases it turns out to be untrue.

What I’d like to know is the parental situation. For example, how was this kid able to obtain the guns seen in the pictures? Not to mention the fact that if he posted the alleged pictures on Twitter, how did they go unnoticed by just about everyone? Or who knew and didn’t say anything.

I guess I also have to repeat myself once again and remind people that murder is not the proper response to being bullied, even if this kid was. And I also have to remind high school kids that high school is just a blip on the timeline of your existence. Not to mention that any of these shootings does nothing to solve the bullying problem in our schools. Instead, it just makes the schools worry about who the next shooter will be.

I’ll be posting more on this as details become available and time allows.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims.

Please do not post links to the Twitter or Facebook accounts of the suspects or the victims. I ask this so their friends who may have not had anything to do with the shooting are not harassed.

UPDATE 2:29PM: The student who died has been identified as Daniel Parmentour. His family released this statement…

“We are shocked by this senseless tragedy. Danny was a bright young boy who had a bright future ahead of him. The family is torn by this loss. We ask that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.”