2012 Chardon High School shooting

On the morning of February 27, 2012, six students were shot at Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio, three of whom died from their injuries. Witnesses said the shooter had a personal rivalry with one of the victims. According to the account, a boy stood up in the cafeteria at approximately 7:30 a.m. and began shooting at students gathered before classes, some of whom were waiting for buses to the affiliated Auburn Career Center and Lake Academy. Surveillance video showed the shooter firing at four male students seated at one table with a handgun, wounding another, then shooting a female student while fleeing. He was chased from the building by teacher Joseph Ricci and football coach Frank Hall, and was arrested by police near his car parked on Woodin Road.

Five students were hospitalized; three died within two days: 16-year-old Daniel Parmertor, a junior who had been waiting for a bus to study computer science at Auburn Career Center; 17-year-old Russell King Jr., a junior enrolled at both Chardon High School and Auburn Career Center who studied alternative energy technologies; and 16-year-old Demetrius Hewlin. The families of King and Hewlin arranged for their organs to be donated. Two other students, Nick Walczak and Joy Rickers, were hospitalized with gunshot wounds and survived; Walczak sustained several serious injuries resulting in permanent paralysis. A sixth student, Nate Mueller, suffered a superficial wound when a bullet grazed his ear and was not hospitalized.

The suspect, identified by authorities as Thomas Michael "T. J." Lane III, was a 17-year-old former Chardon student then attending Lake Academy, an alternative school, and rode a bus in common with several of the victims. He used a .22-caliber handgun that had been purchased legally by his uncle and which Lane had stolen. Student witnesses said Lane had a rivalry with King and appeared to specifically target him. Lane was indicted on three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of aggravated attempted murder, and one count of felonious assault. Following a competency hearing in May 2012, at which a psychiatrist testified Lane suffered from psychosis but was still able to understand the charges against him, a judge found him competent to stand trial. Later that month, prosecutors decided to try him as an adult.

Lane pleaded guilty to the charges on February 26, 2013, and on March 19, 2013, was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without parole. At his sentencing hearing, he revealed a T-shirt reading "KILLER" and made a defiant statement toward the victims' families.

In 2014, the families of the three deceased students and Walczak filed a wrongful death suit against the Chardon School District and Lake Academy; the district and school were later dismissed as parties by a Lake County judge, though several individual school employees remained as defendants, and the case was ultimately returned to the trial court after the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in 2016. Separately, wrongful death suits against Lane's family were settled in May 2014, with the Lane family agreeing to pay nearly $2.7 million. On September 11, 2014, Lane escaped from Allen Correctional Institution along with two other inmates using a makeshift ladder; he was recaptured the following day and transferred to a maximum-security prison.