Ohio shooting suspect may have used relative’s gun

Helga Davies pauses after plac­ing a bas­ket of flow­ers at a memo­r­ial in front of Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio Wednes­day. The Geauga County town 30 miles east of Cleve­land is mourn­ing the death of three stu­dents and the wound­ing of two oth­ers in a shoot­ing at the high school Mon­day morn­ing. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)

ANN SANNER, THOMAS J. SHEERAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

CHARDON, Ohio — The teenager sus­pected in an Ohio school shoot­ing strug­gled with a bro­ken fam­ily and did poorly in school, then appeared to turn him­self around once he was taken in by grand­par­ents and began to attend an alter­na­tive school, long­time neigh­bors and friends said Wednesday.

To a per­son, they expressed dis­be­lief at how the quiet but friendly boy could now be a sus­pect in a shoot­ing that left three peo­ple dead and appears to have involved a gun that dis­ap­peared from his grandfather’s barn.

“T.J. was a very fine per­son,” Carl Hen­der­son, a long­time neigh­bor of the suspect’s grand­par­ents, Thomas and Michelle Lane, said Wednes­day. “Nice-looking man, very friendly, spoke to you, car­ried a con­ver­sa­tion with you.”

The gun, a .22 cal­iber revolver, was noticed as miss­ing after Monday’s shoot­ings and fits the descrip­tion of the pis­tol that report­edly was used to kill three stu­dents and wound two oth­ers at Chardon High School, said Hen­der­son, a retired police offi­cer and for­mer Geauga County sher­iff. He said he has spo­ken to the grand­fa­ther, Thomas Lane, about the gun.

The suspect’s grand­fa­ther believes the gun is the same, “because the gun was there the day before, in the barn,” said Hen­der­son, 74, who says he’s been friends with the boy’s fam­ily for nearly 50 years.

A law enforce­ment offi­cial famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion said the gun used in the shoot­ing, a Ruger .22-caliber Mark III tar­get pis­tol, was bought legally in August 2010 from a gun shop in Mentor.

The offi­cial, who spoke to The Asso­ci­ated Press on the con­di­tion of anonymity because of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, said Lane told author­i­ties he stole the gun from his uncle. It wasn’t clear Wednes­day whether the gun might have been the same one miss­ing from the grandfather’s barn. Hen­der­son said he isn’t aware of an uncle’s involve­ment with the gun.

Lane, 17, admit­ted tak­ing a pis­tol and a knife to the 1,100-student Chardon High and fir­ing 10 shots at a group of stu­dents sit­ting at a cafe­te­ria table, pros­e­cu­tor David Joyce said.

A police report said 33 offi­cers from around the area responded to what was first described as a “shoot­ing acci­den­tal” and was over in less than a minute. Emer­gency crews from four fire depart­ments also responded, accord­ing to the report obtained by the AP through a pub­lic records request.

The grand­par­ents feel ter­ri­ble about what hap­pened and have no expla­na­tion for the teen’s alleged role in the shoot­ings, Hen­der­son said.

Lane came from a bro­ken fam­ily but seemed to heal over time, said Hen­der­son, who added that the boy began liv­ing with his grand­par­ents off and on sev­eral years ago.

Lane’s father, Thomas Lane, 40, served seven months in prison in 2003 on charges of dis­rupt­ing pub­lic ser­vice and felo­nious assault, accord­ing to state prison records. Mes­sages were left Wednes­day at num­bers listed for Thomas Lane. Neigh­bors said he vis­ited his son often, some­times tak­ing him and his sis­ter camp­ing or to the school to catch the bus.

Russ Miller, who also lives near the Nolans, said he has known Lane since the boy was 5 or 6 years old and the grand­par­ents for at least 35 years. He described Lane as an “easy going” per­son whose grades had improved since he left Chardon High School about a year and a half ago and began attend­ing Lake Acad­emy, a school asso­ci­ated with the local career center.

“He went from flunk­ing out from what I under­stand to almost a straight A stu­dent with hon­ors and he was going to grad­u­ate a year early,” Miller said.

Miller, 64, a retired sheet metal worker, said he had talked to him about join­ing the mil­i­tary, but the boy hadn’t made plans.

“He was a typ­i­cal 17-year-old,” said Miller, a Viet­nam vet­eran. “He didn’t really know what he wanted to do in his life.” He said Lane didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs and was “kind of a health nut.”

About 55 stu­dents attend Lake Acad­emy, a 15-year-old school for stu­dents who haven’t done well in tra­di­tional schools. The school, about 15 miles away from Chardon in Willoughby, has secu­rity mea­sures includ­ing elec­tron­i­cally con­trolled doors and sur­veil­lance cam­eras but no metal detec­tors. School offi­cials declined to com­ment Wednesday.

Another neigh­bor on Wednes­day described T.J. Lane as a nor­mal boy who excelled in school and played out­side often with his sis­ter, build­ing snow hills and skateboarding.

Steve Saw­czak said he never would have allowed his own grand­chil­dren to play nearby if he thought any­thing was wrong with the teenager. Saw­czak lives next door to Lane’s other grand­fa­ther, Jack Nolan, who has famil­ial cus­tody of the sus­pect and attended his court hear­ing Tuesday.

“We’re all absolutely stunned,” Saw­czak said. “He’s an aver­age kind of kid.”

Saw­czak, 58, a pas­tor who has worked with trou­bled chil­dren, said he never saw hints of what was com­ing. A next-door neigh­bor of Lane’s grand­par­ents for almost 25 years, he said the cou­ple, who have cus­tody of the teen, gave Lane a healthy place to live. They often took them to school events.

“They are in shock,” Saw­czak said. “They are absolutely devastated.”

At Chardon High, the fac­ulty park­ing lot was jammed Wednes­day as teach­ers returned to the school for the first time since Monday’s shoot­ing, with grief coun­selors on hand, if needed. Par­ents and stu­dents are encour­aged to return to the school Thurs­day, and classes resume Friday.

Stu­dents planned to march together to the school Thurs­day from the main square about three-quarters of a mile away, along a street where red rib­bons were tied to all the trees.

Hun­dreds of res­i­dents turned out for a vigil Tues­day evening at St. Mary Catholic Church to pray and hear Scrip­ture read­ings, while over­head ban­ners from a rival high school con­tained sig­na­tures from other stu­dents show­ing their support.

Lane, a thin young man described by other stu­dents as extremely quiet, appeared briefly in juve­nile court Tues­day. He spoke lit­tle, and a judge ordered him held for at least 15 days.

Pros­e­cu­tors have until Thurs­day to bring charges and are expected to ask that Lane be tried as an adult. He will prob­a­bly be charged with three counts of aggra­vated mur­der and other offenses, Joyce said.

Joyce described sus­pect Lane as “some­one who’s not well” and said the teen didn’t know the vic­tims but chose them randomly.

Killed were Demetrius Hewlin, 16, Rus­sell King Jr., 17, and Daniel Parmer­tor, 16.

An 18-year-old girl who was hurt in the shoot­ings was released from the hos­pi­tal Tues­day and was home with fam­ily. The girl’s fam­ily declined to com­ment Wednes­day. The sec­ond injured teen remained in seri­ous con­di­tion at a sub­ur­ban Cleve­land hospital.

Both sides in the legal case are under a gag order imposed by the judge at the prosecutor’s request. The judge also barred media out­lets from tak­ing pho­tos of the faces of the sus­pect and some of his relatives.

The AP trans­mit­ted pho­tos and video of Lane that were shot before the hear­ing. The AP and at least one other media out­let, The Plain Dealer of Cleve­land, planned to chal­lenge the judge’s order Wednesday.

Posted by AP News on Feb 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.