Face of a Killer? Suspect Identified in Ohio Shooting as Third Student Declared Dead

CHARDON, Ohio (The Blaze/AP) -- The death toll rose to three Tuesday in the shooting rampage in an Ohio high school cafeteria as schoolmates and townspeople grappled with the tragedy and wondered what could have set the teenage gunman off.

The teenager under arrest in Monday's attack, T.J. Lane, faced an afternoon hearing in juvenile court.

Shaken residents offered condolences and prayers to the families of those killed and wounded at 1,100-student Chardon High School in suburban Cleveland. All three of the dead were students, as are the two people wounded.

A Cleveland hospital said Demetrius Hewlin, who had been in critical condition, died Tuesday morning. The news came shortly after Police Chief Tim McKenna said 17-year-old Russell King Jr. had died.

Another student, Daniel Parmertor, died hours after the shooting, which sent students screaming through the halls and led teachers to lock down their classrooms as they had practiced doing so many times during drills.

Both King and Parmertor were students at the Auburn Career Center, a vocational school, and were waiting in the Chardon High cafeteria for a bus for their daily 15-minute ride when they were shot.

The police chief would shed no light on a motive.

"I feel sorry not only for that family but all the families that are affected by this," McKenna said. Characterizing himself as a "hometown boy," he added: "Chardon will take care of Chardon."

A student who saw the attack up close said it appeared that the gunman targeted a group of students -- one who may have been dating Lane's ex-girlfriend -- sitting together and that the one who was killed was gunned down while trying to duck under the cafeteria table.

Lane's family is mourning "this terrible loss for their community," attorney Robert Farnacci said in a statement.

An education official said the suspected shooter is a Lake Academy student, not a student at Chardon High. Brian Bontempo declined to answer any questions about the student. Bontempo is the superintendent of the Lake County Educational Service Center, which operates the academy.

The alternative school in Willoughby serves 7th through 12th grades. Students may have been referred to the school because of academic or behavioral problems.

The FBI said the suspect was arrested near his car a half-mile from Chardon. He was not immediately charged.

Lane, however, did show some warning signs before the shooting. Besides tweeting an apparent threat, he also posted a message on Facebook:

In a time long since, a time of repent, The Renaissance. In a quaint lonely town, sits a man with a frown. No job. No family. No crown. His luck had run out. Lost and alone.

The streets were his home. His thoughts would solely consist of "why do we exist?" His only company to confide in was the vermin in the street. He longed for only one thing, the world to bow at his feet.

They too should feel his secret fear. The dismal drear. His pain had made him sincere.

He was better than the rest, all those ones he detests, within their castles, so vain. Selfish and conceited.

They couldn't care less about the peasents they mistreated. They were in their own world, it was a joyous one too. That castle, she stood just to do all she could to keep the peasents at bay, not the enemy away.

They had no enemies in their filthy orgy. And in her, the castles every story, was just another chamber of Lucifer's Laboratory. The world is a sandbox for all the wretched sinners.

They simply create what they want and make themselves the winners. But the true winner, he has nothing at all. Enduring the pain of waiting for that castle to fall. Through his good deeds, the rats and the fleas.

He will have for what he pleads, through the eradication of disease. So, to the castle he proceeds, like an ominous breeze through the trees. "Stay back!" The Guards screamed as they were thrown to their knees. "Oh God, have mercy, please!"

The castle, she gasped and then so imprisoned her breath, to the shallow confines of her fragile chest. I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep. I am Death. And you have always been the sod. So repulsive and so odd.

You never even deserved the presence of God, and yet, I am here. Around your cradle I plod. Came on foot, without shod. How improper, how rude. However, they shall not mind the mud on my feet if there is blood on your sheet.

Now! Feel death, not just mocking you. Not just stalking you but inside of you. Wriggle and writhe. Feel smaller beneath my might. Seizure in the Pestilence that is my scythe. Die, all of you.

Video taken in the area apparently shows Lane being apprehended:

Teachers locked down their classrooms as they had been trained to do during drills, and students took cover as they waited for the all-clear in this town of 5,100 people, 30 miles from Cleveland. One teacher was said to have dragged a wounded student into his classroom to protect him. Another chased the gunman out of the building, police said.

Fifteen-year-old Danny Komertz, who witnessed the shooting, said Lane was known as an outcast who had apparently been bullied. But others disputed that.

"Even though he was quiet, he still had friends," said Tyler Lillash, 16. "He was not bullied."

Farinacci, representing Lane and his family, told WKYC-TV that Lane "pretty much sticks to himself but does have some friends and has never been in trouble over anything that we know about."

Long before official word came of the attack, parents learned of the bloodshed from students via text message and cellphone and thronged the streets around the school, anxiously awaiting word on their children.

Two of the wounded were listed in critical condition, and another was in serious condition.

"I looked up and this kid was pointing a gun about 10 feet away from me to a group of four kids sitting at a table," Komertz said. He said the gunman fired two shots quickly, and students scrambled for safety. One of them was "trying to get underneath the table, trying to hide, protecting his face."

Slain student Daniel Parmertor was an aspiring computer repairman who was waiting in the cafeteria for the bus for his daily 15-minute ride to a vocational school. His teacher at the Auburn Career School had no idea why Parmertor, "a very good young man, very quiet," had been targeted, said Auburn superintendent Maggie Lynch.

Officers investigating the shooting blocked off a road in a heavily wooded area several miles from the school. Federal agents patrolled the muddy driveway leading to several spacious homes and ponds, while other officers walked a snowy hillside. A police dog was brought in. It wasn't clear what they were looking for.

Teacher Joe Ricci had just begun class when he heard shots and slammed the door to his classroom, yelling, "Lockdown!" to students, according to Karli Sensibello, a student whose sister was in Ricci's classroom.

A few minutes later, Ricci heard a student moaning outside, opened the door and pulled in student Nick Walczak who had been shot several times, Sensibello said in an email. Ricci comforted Walczak and let him use his cellphone to call his girlfriend and parents, Sensibello said. She said her sister was too upset to talk.

Heather Ziska, 17, said she was in the cafeteria when she saw a boy she recognized as a fellow student come into the cafeteria and start shooting. She said she and several others immediately ran outside, while other friends ran into a middle school and others locked themselves in a teachers' lounge.

"Everybody just started running," said 17-year-old Megan Hennessy, who was in class when she heard loud noises. "Everyone was running and screaming down the hallway."

Farinacci said Lane's family was "devastated" by the shootings and that they offered "their most heartfelt and sincere condolences" to Parmertor's family and the families of the wounded students.

"This is something that could never have been predicted," Farinacci told WKYC-TV.

Rebecca Moser, 17, had just settled into her chemistry class when the school went into lockdown. The class of about 25 students ducked behind the lab tables at the back of the classroom, uncertain whether it was a drill.

Text messages started flying inside and outside the school, spreading information about what was happening and what friends and family were hearing outside the building.

"We all have cellphones, so people were constantly giving people updates - about what was going on, who the victims were, how they were doing," Moser said.

The school had no metal detectors, but current and past students said it had frequent security drills in case of a shooting.

Anxious parents of high school students were told to go to an elementary school to pick up their children.

Joe Bergant, Chardon school superintendent, said school was canceled Tuesday and grief counselors would be available to students and families.

"If you haven't hugged or kissed your kid in the last couple of days, take that time," he said.

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AP writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati and Julie Carr Smyth and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus contributed to this report.