Teen-ager enters guilty pleas in Ga. school shooting

CONYERS, Ga. - A teen-ager entered dual pleas of guilty and guilty but mentally ill Monday in a 1999 school shooting that left six fellow students wounded.

A judge will consider the results of mental evaluations on 17-year-old T.J. Solomon before deciding which of the two pleas to accept.

If the judge accepts the guilty pleas to all 29 charges, including aggravated assault, cruelty to children and weapons violations, Solomon could be sentenced to up to 211 years in prison.

If the judge accepts the guilty-but-mentally-ill plea, Solomon would still go to prison but would receive psychiatric treatment under the care of prison doctors.

''Obviously, this act was the act of someone extremely sick. It was not characteristic of this man's life or his values,'' said Solomon's lawyer, Ed Garland.

Solomon, who was 15 at the time, opened fire with a sawed-off rifle on 150 students in a common area at Heritage High School in Conyers, about 25 miles east of Atlanta, one month after the Columbine High massacre in Colorado. Witnesses said he appeared to be aiming below waist level.

He then dropped to his knees and pointed a .357-caliber Magnum revolver, first at his mouth and then at an assistant principal, but surrendered to the man with a tearful: ''Oh, my God, I'm so scared!''

Solomon's lawyers had argued that the teen-ager should be hospitalized for mental illness, but a Georgia appeals court ruled that he was not out of touch with reality at the time of the shootings.

Friends have said Solomon was upset over a failed romance, but he was vague about his motives in a letter of apology earlier this year.

''It is hard to describe how dark and isolated I felt leading up to the date of my mistake,'' Solomon wrote. ''It almost made everything in my life not worth waiting for.''

Cecil Brinkley, the assistant principal, was honored last week by the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, established in 1904 by Andrew Carnegie to recognize acts of heroism.