Questions in Ohio shootings

CLEVELAND - Officials yesterday couldn't say, despite 26 cameras, how Asa H. Coon, an armed, suspended 14-year-old student was able to get into his downtown school a day earlier and wound two students and two teachers before killing himself.

Those questions were being asked here yesterday even as news broke of an incident in suburban Philadelphia where a boy supposedly had threatened to wreak havoc at the school he had once attended.

Cleveland 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 Coon, with two revolvers, could enter the SuccessTech Academy alternative school. Police Chief Michael McGrath said a classmate could have let him in a back door.

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