CHICAGO - A 14-year-old gunman opened fire at a high school in Cleveland, Ohio, Wednesday, shooting at least four people, authorities said, in the latest in a string of incidents in the United States.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said four people were shot in the fusillade but would not confirm media reports that the young shooter had been killed after his shooting spree.
"They have the shooter," he said at a hasty press conference held outside the school.
Two adults and two students were shot, Jackson said. Another student hurt her knee while trying to flee.
"All the children were in stable, good condition," Jackson told reporters, adding however that the adults were in a more serious condition.
Local media reported the 14-year-old student was frustrated after being suspended from school on Tuesday.
He came to school early Wednesday and roamed through the hallways with a gun in each hand and shots were heard on two different floors.
Some students and teachers rushed outside at the sound of the shots while others hid in closets and under desks.
It was just the latest in a spate of shootings over the past weeks.
On Tuesday, two people were killed and two others injured in a shooting at a workshop in Simi Valley, California, police said.
That shooting took place at a tire assembly shop in the city of 120,000 some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Los Angeles often listed among the country`s safest communities.
And on Sunday, a gun-toting sheriff`s deputy went on a rampage, killing his ex-girlfriend and five other youths at a house party in a small town in Wisconsin, authorities said.
The 20-year-old deputy and all those shot were all part of a close-knit group of friends, sources said.
Wednesday`s incident recalled the horrors eight years ago of the Columbine high school shooting in Colorado and a similar bloodbath at Virginia Tech earlier this year.
During the massacre at Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a shooting rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 24 others, before committing suicide.
That shooting led to a period of introspection across the United States as the country briefly contemplated the downside of its celebrated "gun culture" but in the end, failed to pass laws or make other changes that would have made firearms less available.
A similar reaction followed the shooting in April of this year of 32 people by a mentally disturbed student at Virginia Tech University.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported last month that more than 1.4 million murders, rapes, robberies and assaults were committed around the United States last year, or a violent crime every 22 seconds.
The number of victims of violent crime in the United States last year was the equivalent of the entire population of European Union member Estonia or the African state of Gabon falling victim to murder, rape, robbery or assault.
The rate of violent crime was up by 1.9 percent compared with 2005, with murders climbing by 1.8 percent to nearly 15,000 cases last year
mso-sg/jkb
10/10/2007 19:15 GMT