Georgia community mourns 2 students and 2 teachers killed in deadliest school shooting this year

The community of Winder, Georgia, is grieving two students and two teachers who were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School Wednesday. It’s the deadliest of 45 school shootings so far this year. Here’s the latest:

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

• Authorities identify four killed: Hosey identified the four 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 shows the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.

• Nine others injured: Nine other people – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of those wounded are expected to recover.

• How the shooting unfolded: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. Law enforcement arrived shortly afterwards, Hosey said, in addition to two school resource officers who were assigned to Apalachee High. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. A school resource deputy confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

• AR-platform weapon used in shooting: The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official earlier told CNN it was an AR-15-style rifle, but did not provide any information on how investigators believe the weapon was obtained or any other details on the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the weapon was brought into the school. “We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline from the time that he got here to school today until the incident,” Hosey said.

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

• County schools went into lockdown: All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there were no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.

• Government officials react to shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “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 in a statement. General Merrick Garland said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after 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 at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools shutter after shooting: Schools in Barrow County will be closed the rest of the week while the investigation plays out. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School. Winder, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau.

• How it compares to past school shootings: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 13 on university and college campuses. The shooting is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings. The US has suffered 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.

What we know about the 14-year-old suspect

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

The online threats included photographs of guns, the statement said.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.

The agencies added that “at that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”

Investigators have spoken to the suspect and have been in touch with his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.

One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspect left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned near the end of the class, he knocked to get back 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 classroom next door and opened fire.

Hosey said there’s no evidence of other schools being targeted, but investigators are pursuing “any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident.” There’s also no evidence that any additional shooter was involved, and no evidence of a list of schools being targeted.

“However, there is a lot of evidence that is being recovered and evaluated,” Hosey added.

As law enforcement investigates the shooting and motive behind it, Smith warned that it could take “multiple days” to get answers.

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

“This is everybody’s worst nightmare and I just want to offer my sincere condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families that have lost loved ones, for those that are injured and continuing to fight through just a tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey called the faculty and staff at the high school “heroes” that took action to protect students.

“The heroes that we need to remember is our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroes in the actions that they took. The protocols in this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today so I want to recognize them.”

School community reeling from deaths of 4 victims

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

Kathrine’s friend said she was okay and then started texting group chats, where they found out that a friend was killed and at least two more were injured.

“When I found out I started crying, and I just got mad, because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.

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

Other Apalachee High School students say they are still processing today’s tragedy, when their classmates and teachers were gunned down.

“It’s been pretty difficult because like a lot happened in kind of a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was kind of hard to process it.”

Another student, 14-year-old Macey Right, said she is worried about returning to school.

“I really don’t want to go back; I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying 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 worrying about my career.”

As reported by CNN