How did Ohio shooter get into school?

CLEVELAND - Despite 26 security cameras, officials could not say yesterday how an armed, suspended 14-year-old student was able to get into his downtown school a day earlier and shoot two students and two teachers before killing himself.

School officials also were investigating how a number of warning signs from the troubled student, including threats made last week, apparently went unheeded.

Police were checking surveillance video yesterday for clues as to how Asa H. Coon, armed with two revolvers, was able to enter the SuccessTech Academy alternative school. Police Chief Michael McGrath said a classmate could have let him in a back door.

Coon, a freshman, was a new student at the school, but the district has a dossier on his past problems. He had mental-health problems, spent time in two juvenile facilities, and was suspended from school last year for trying to harm a student, according to juvenile-court records.

He had been suspended for a fight Monday, but students said officials had done nothing about threats he had made last week to blow up the school and stab students.

"I told my friends in the class that he had a gun and stuff," Rasheem Smith, 15, said yesterday on CBS's Early Show. "We talked to the principal. She would try to get us all in the office, but it would always be too busy for it to happen."

Responding on the show, schools chief executive Eugene Sanders said the district would investigate. A message left at principal Johneita Durant's office was not returned, and a phone call to her home was not answered.

The school of about 240 students has metal detectors, but none was operating Wednesday.

Maureen Harper, a city spokeswoman, said Sanders would give the mayor a plan by noon today to address whether additional security measures are needed at the school and how the school identifies potential problems among students.

Wearing black clothing, black-painted fingernails, and a T-shirt of Marilyn Manson - the shock rocker he said he chose to worship instead of God - Coon fired as students ran screaming or hid under tables or in closets. Then he shot himself behind the right ear with a .38-caliber shot shell loaded with pellets. Coroner Frank Miller ruled the death a suicide.

Near Coon's body, police found the two guns, .22- and .38-caliber revolvers, a box of ammunition for each, and three folding knives, McGrath said. He said the guns were older, meaning it will take some time to trace them.

One teacher remained hospitalized.

Coon's 19-year-old brother, Stephen, was taken into custody at the family home for parole violations, according to a prisons spokeswoman, JoEllen Lyons. The family would not comment yesterday. Lyons said the arrest was not connected to the shooting.

McGrath said that since 2006, police had gone to the family's home five times for calls about domestic violence, an assault, a property crime, and a hit-and-run accident.