Chardon High School Shooting Left ‘Friends Laying All Over the Place’
Published at
David Dermer/Getty Images(CHARDON, Ohio) — One student has died and four were wounded in a fusillade of bullets at Chardon High School in Ohio on Monday morning in an attack that left “friends laying all over the place” in puddles of blood. The gunman was identified as a student at the school by survivors of the shooting.
Nate Mueller, a junior at the school, was having breakfast with three friends when he heard a loud pop like a firecracker about 7:45 a.m., he told ABC News.
A friend yelled, “Duck!” and Mueller turned to see the shooter standing by his table. Mueller said he saw the gunman take his second shot.
Mueller said he saw one friend get hit. “He was over the table in a pool of blood,” he said. Another pal “was on the floor in a puddle of blood next to him,” Mueller said.
A third friend “had not been hit yet as I jumped over him,” Mueller said.
Mueller got on the floor and was trying to crawl away when a shot rang out and he felt a bullet graze his ear. He was not badly injured, he said, with just a small red mark left on his ear.
“It was terror. Everything had just gone tunnel vision, like, I need to get out of here,” Mueller said. “You see glances of your friends laying all over the place. There’s blood, there’s people screaming, everybody’s just running in different directions and you’re just trying to get out. That’s all you can do, get out of the school and not look back even though your friends are back there.”
Two students were taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Hospital and three were taken by helicopter to MetroHealth Hospital, according to WEWS.
One student died from the wounds. Two at MetroHealth Hospital are in critical condition, according to police. Of the two students at Hillcrest Hospital, one is in stable condition and one is in serious condition.
Police have not officially identified the gunman, saying only that he has not yet been charged and that he is a juvenile.
The gunman opened fire with a handgun just before 8 a.m. in the school cafeteria where students were eating breakfast, authorities and witnesses said.
The shooter was chased out of the building by a teacher and later turned himself in to a passerby, authorities said.
The suspect is in custody at Geauga County Safety Center, according to ABC News Cleveland affiliate WEWS.
Chardon is a village in Geauga County, about 35 miles east of Cleveland, Ohio.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio