Post date: Mar 19, 2013 7:8:3 PM
With the word "killer" scrawled on his t-shirt, Ohio teenager T.J. Lane gestures obscenely in court as he gets sentenced to life in prison for killing three students last year.
CHARDON, OHIO, UNITED STATES (MARCH 19, 2013) (NBC) - An Ohio teenager wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled on it gave a profane statement and made an obscene gesture in court as he was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Tuesday (March 19) for killing three students in a school shooting rampage last year.
T.J. Lane, 18, also wounded three students in the attack in a high school cafeteria in Chardon, a small town east of Cleveland, leaving one paralyzed from the waist down.Lane's attack in February 2012 was one of several mass shootings in the United States last year, including a massacre at an elementary school in Newtown,Connecticut December.
Lane sat facing the families of the children he shot and gave a brief profane statement. He then made an obscene gesture directed at the families before Geauga County Judge David Fuhry imposed the sentence.
Lane had pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him on February 26, a day before the one-year anniversary of his attack. He was charged as an adult, but because he was 17 at the time of the rampage he was ineligible for the death penalty.
Fuhry said Lane lacked remorse and examinations showed he had feigned mental illness. A bright student set to graduate from high school early, Lane instead long planned, prepared for, and then executed the attack, he said.
Lane killed Demetrius Hewlin, 16; Russell King Jr., 17; and Daniel Parmertor, 16. He wounded Nick Walczak, who was paralyzed from the waist down, Nate Muellerand Joy Rickers.
Fuhry sentenced him to three life terms for the aggravated murders and an aggregate of 37 years for the wounding of the other students, all sentences to be served consecutively.
Lane was taken into custody shortly after the attack and confessed to firing 10 rounds from a .22-caliber pistol at the students in the cafeteria.
A massacre in December at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown,Connecticut, left 26 people dead, including 20 first-graders, sparking a national outcry to curb gun violence and leading President Barack Obama to propose a ban of military-style assault weapons and limits on the capacity of ammunition clips.