"IT WAS obvious from day one that he was troubled," Michael Grassie told Newsweek. A teacher at a highly praised magnet school in Cleveland, Ohio, Grassie was recently shot by his student, Asa Coon, in his world history class. He and three others were wounded by Asa, who then took his own life. This is yet another story of a kid with all the warning signs of trouble who just seemed to fall through the cracks.
Asa Coon, however, did not go unnoticed. He was raised by a single mother, at one point in a house filled with garbage, according to government records. At age seven, social workers found his arms covered in fleabites. His violent older brother was in and out of prison, and Asa faced juvenile charges last year when he punched his own mother in the eye. Just days before the shooting, Asa was disciplined for a fist fight.
Grassie thinks the system let Asa down. Some of the teachers at the school wanted to send the boy to another school, but Grassie believes that making "some other teachers, some other students [deal] with him
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