Apalachee High School shooting: Georgia community mourns 4 students, teachers killed in deadliest school shooting this year

CNN
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The community of Winder, Georgia, is mourning the deaths of two students and two teachers killed in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday, the deadliest of 45 school shootings this year. Here’s the latest:

• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: The suspected gunman is in custody and has been identified as Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference. Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said he will be charged with murder and will be treated as an adult as he moves through the criminal justice system. Gray is scheduled to report to jail Wednesday night. Hosey said he was not sure when Colt will make his first court appearance but said it would be “within a reasonable amount of time.”

• Authorities determined that four victims were killed: Hosey identified the four victims killed in Wednesday’s shooting as 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie. The school’s website lists both adults as math teachers and Aspinwall as an assistant football coach.

• Nine people were injured: Nine victims (eight students and one teacher) were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All are expected to recover.

• How the attack happened: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. Law enforcement arrived on the scene shortly after, and two school security officers assigned to Apalachee High School also arrived, Hosey said. The gunshots sent students and faculty desperately seeking cover as schools across the district were quarantined and parents scrambled for information. Smith told reporters that a school security officer confronted the shooter, who was taken to the ground and taken into custody.

• AR platform weapon used in shooting: Hosey said the weapon used in the mass shooting was an AR-platform weapon. A law enforcement official previously told CNN it was an AR-15 style rifle, but investigators have not said how the suspect obtained the weapon or provided other details about the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the suspect brought the weapon to the school. “We’re still trying to nail down a lot of the timeline from when he came to the school today to when it happened,” Hosey said.

• The high school received a phone threat: The high school had previously received a phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The call, made Wednesday morning, warned that there would be five school shootings and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who made the call.

• District schools quarantined: All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, have been quarantined and police have been dispatched to all high schools in the area out of an abundance of caution, but no secondary incidents or crime scenes have been reported, sources said.

• Government officials react to armed attack: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement on social media that he was directing all available state resources to assist at the scene. The governor called on “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden offered federal support to state and local officials and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. “We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said. Gen. Merrick Garland said the U.S. Department of Justice is “ready” to support the community in the wake of the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said during a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools were closed following the attack: Schools in Barrow County will be closed for the rest of the week pending the completion of the investigation. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, according to the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School. Winder, located about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

• Compared to past school attacks: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 were reported on K-12 campuses and 13 were on university and college campuses. The attack is one of 11 school shootings that resulted in four or more deaths since CNN first began tracking school shootings in 2008. The U.S. has experienced at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.

The suspect, a 14-year-old student from Apalachee, was questioned by law enforcement last year about “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from the FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, the agencies said.

The statement said online threats included photos of weapons.

“The father said there were hunting guns in the house, but no information was given on the subject.
“Uncontrolled access to these is prohibited,” the statement said.

“At that time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or any additional law enforcement action at the local, state or federal levels,” the agencies said.

Researchers spoke Smith said they have reached out to the suspected shooter and are in contact with his family. The sheriff said it is not yet known if the shooter is connected to his victims, but authorities stressed that will be part of the investigation.

One of the students, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspected shooter left the classroom at around 9:45 a.m. at the beginning of Algebra 1 class. When the suspect returned toward the end of class, he knocked on the door to get in. Another student went to open the door, but Lyela said they noticed the gun and didn’t open the door. She said the shooter went to the next classroom and opened fire.

Hosey said there was no evidence that other schools were targeted, but investigators were looking for “any leads on possible associates of the shooter involved in this incident.” There was also no evidence that another shooter was involved and no evidence of a list of targeted schools.

“However, there is a wealth of evidence that has been recovered and evaluated,” Hosey added.

While law enforcement is investigating the incident and the motive behind it, Smith said it is “multiple daysTo get an answer to the question “.

Kemp thanked first responders and other officials who responded to Wednesday’s shooting.

“This is everyone’s worst nightmare and I just want to offer my heartfelt condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families who have lost loved ones, to those who have been injured and to those who continue to struggle through this tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey described the faculty and staff at the high school who took action to protect students as “heroes.”

“The heroes that we need to remember are our faculty and staff at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroic in the actions that they took. The protocols at this school and the system that was put in place today prevented this from being a much bigger tragedy than what we’re experiencing here today, so I want to commend them.”

Kathrine Maldonado overslept and missed school Wednesday, she said. When she woke up later that morning, her friend texted her saying the school was on lockdown.

Kathrine’s friend said she was fine and then began messaging in their group chat, where they learned that one of their friends had died and at least two more people were injured.

“When I found out I started crying and I was so angry because why would you shoot innocent people?” Kathrine said.

Kathrine said her friend, who died in the shooting, was known as the class joker and described him as a “sweet person”.

Other students at Apalachee High School say they’re still trying to get over today’s tragedy, which saw their classmate and teacher shot to death.

“It was pretty tough because so much happened in such a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was a little bit hard to process.”

Another student’s daughter, Macey Right, 14, said she was worried about returning to school.

“I don’t really want to go back; I feel like I should go back to school and not worry about dying,” Right said. “I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and my career.”