Students describe Ohio shooting

Terrified teenagers have described how a fellow student opened fire, injuring three teenagers and two adults, before killing himself at an American high school.

Asa Coon, 14, had been suspended from the SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland, Ohio since Monday for fighting near the school that day, said Charles Blackwell, president of the student-parent organisation said.

On Wednesday, he went into the school armed with two .38 calibre revolvers, police said. Coon fired eight shots and may have targeted teachers.

Police found a duffel bag stocked with ammunition and three knives in a bathroom.

The first person shot, student Michael Peek, had punched Coon in the face just before the shootings began, student Rasheem Smith, 15, said.

Coon "came out of the bathroom and bumped Mike and he (Mike) punched him in his face. Mike started walking. He shot Mike in the side".

Officials said the gunman was wearing a black Marilyn Manson concert shirt with black jeans and had black-painted finger nails.

Witnesses said he moved through the converted five-storey downtown office building, working his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms.

Three male students, aged 14, 17 and 18, and two men, aged 42 and 57, were injured in the shootings, the city's mayor Frank Jackson said.

A 14-year-old girl fell and hurt her knee while running out of the school.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper has reported that Coon spent time in two juvenile facilities after a domestic violence episode and was also given home detention, according to juvenile court records.

The paper said he was suspended from school last year for trying to injure a student.

The shootings come almost six months after student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and then himself in the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16.

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