One student has died and four were wounded in a fusillade of bullets at Chardon High School Ohio this morning in an attack that left "friends laying all over the place" in puddles of blood.
The gunman was identified as a student at the school by survivors of the shooting.
Nate Mueller, a junior at the school, was having breakfast with three friends when he heard a loud pop like a firecracker about 7:45 .am., he told ABC News.
A friend yelled, "Duck!" and Mueller turned to see the shooter standing by his table. Mueller said he saw the gunman take his second shot.
Mueller said he saw one friend get hit. "He was over the table in a pool of blood," he said. Another pal "was on the floor in a puddle of blood next to him," Mueller said.
A third friend "had not been hit yet as I jumped over him," Mueller said.
Mueller got on the floor and was trying to crawl away when a shot rang out and he felt a bullet graze his ear. He was not badly injured, he said, with just a small red mark left on his ear.
"It was terror. Everything had just gone tunnel vision, like, I need to get out of here," Mueller said. "You see glances of your friends laying all over the place. There's blood, there's people screaming, everybody's just running in different directions and you're just trying to get out. That's all you can do, get out of the school and not look back even though your friends are back there."
John Horton/The Plain Dealer/AP Photo/
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One student later died from the wounds.
"There is one deceased student," Chardon Police Chief Tim McKenna said at a news conference. "That's the sad news for all of us today."
Police have not officially identified the gunman, saying only that he has not yet been charged and that he is a juvenile.
Mueller described the suspect as "a quiet kid. Freshman year he got into a 'Goth' phase and didn't talk to that many people anymore. He never egged anybody on. He just went about his business."
The gunman opened fire with a handgun just before 8 a.m. in the school cafeteria where students were eating breakfast, authorities and witnesses said.
The shooter was chased out of the building by a teacher and later turned himself in to a passerby, authorities said.
The suspect is in custody at Geauga County Safety Center, according to ABC News' Cleveland affiliate WEWS.
"Our prayers go out to the five victims and their families," a choked up School Superintendent Joseph Bergant said at news conference. "It's a horrible tragedy."
Geauga County Sheriff Daniel McClelland praised the reaction to the shooting.
"A prompt entry was made into the school. They went into the school and located the victims. It became readily apparent that the shooter had fled already," McClelland said. "The individual was apprehended some distance from the school and had fled on foot."
The officer said police created a security perimeter to make sure the gunman could not return and a search, including a K-9 unit, was launched for the suspect.
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