Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Cleveland school shooting update


I briefly discussed this last week. In the aftermath of this tragedy, the Associated Press released a story talking about a teacher from SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland -- Michael Grassie. The student he was talking about was Asa Coon, 14, who wounded two teachers and two students before taking his own life.
Grassie, sitting in a wheelchair, said Coon was doing poorly in his class at SuccessTech Academy and risked failing.

"I know that made him really mad," he said. "He just seemed really troubled, really troubled."

Grassie said Coon came into his classroom Wednesday holding two revolvers and said something Grassie didn't understand, and then Coon said, "Now what have you got to say to me?"

"He just shot me," Grassie said.

"I remember the expression on Asa's face," he said. "Anger, total anger. Real hatred. It's something I haven't seen on a 14-year-old's face before."
Now the title of this article is this: Cleveland School Shooter Upset About Failing History. That's what drew me into this story initially. I was asking myself, "How can just failing a class drive a student to take shots at others and then take his own life?"

It's clear that there was more going on in this student's mind. And, this teacher, unfortunately, said what is commonly said in tragedies like this one, "All the warning signs were there. No one picked up on them." There will be a lot of finger pointing and blame passed around. Hopefully, a definite solution can be developed to prevent something like this in the future.

2 comments:

Vinny "Bond" Marini said...

When are people going to say 'HEY, I think something is wrong here, let's talk to the parents, or guardians, or other teachers, or authorities' instead of... 'gee he seems awful distant recently, but hey, I have to get home to do yadda yadda'

We can stop many of these incidents if we just pay attention to those around us!

twilite said...

Sad. Is this 'you mind your business and I mind mine' attitude...or just callousness on our part?

The song: "What the world needs now...is love sweet love!"