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. It is the worst of 45 school shootings this year. Here is the latest news:
• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: The suspected shooter 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. He will be charged with murder and treated as an adult while he goes through the criminal justice system, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. Gray will be booked into jail Wednesday night. Hosey said he was unsure when Colt would make his first court appearance, but said it will be “within a reasonable amount of time.”
• Authorities identify four victims killed: Hosey identified the four victims of 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 that the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.
• Nine injured victims: Nine victims – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of the injured are expected to recover.
• This is how the shooting went: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. Police arrived shortly afterward, Hosey said, in addition to two school security officers assigned to Apalachee High. The shooting sent students and faculty scrambling for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents frantically searched for information. A school security officer confronted the shooter, who fell to the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.
• AR platform weapon used when shooting: The weapon used in the mass shooting was an AR platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official previously told CNN it was an AR-15 rifle, but did not provide any details on how investigators believe the suspect obtained the weapon or any other details about the gun and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the suspect got the weapon into the school. “We’re still trying to sort out the timeline from when he arrived here at the school today to when the incident occurred,” Hosey said.
• The high school had received a telephone threat: The high school had previously received a phone threat, several law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call on Wednesday morning warned that there would be shootings at five schools and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who made the call.
• The district’s schools were closed: According to sources, all schools in the Barrow County school system, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were dispatched to all high schools in the county out of an abundance of caution, but there were no reports of further incidents or crime scenes.
• Government officials react to the shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has directed all available state resources to assist on the ground, 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. Gen. Merrick Garland said the U.S. Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community following the shooting. “We are still gathering intelligence, but the FBI and ATF are on the ground working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.
• Local schools closed after shooting: Barrow County schools will remain closed for the rest of the week while the investigation continues. 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, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 at the time of the 2020 census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Comparison with previous school shootings: Of the 45 shootings this year, 32 occurred on school campuses and 13 on university and college campuses. The shooting is one of 11 shootings with four or more fatalities since 2008, when CNN first began tracking school shootings. There have been at least 385 mass shootings in the U.S. 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 per day.
The suspect, a 14-year-old student from Apalachee, was questioned by police last year about “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from the FBI Atlanta and Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, authorities said.
The online threats contained photos of weapons, the statement said.
“The father stated that he had hunting rifles in the house, but the perpetrator had none
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.
Authorities added that “at that time there was no sufficient probable cause to warrant an arrest or further law enforcement action at the local, state or federal level.”
Investigators have spoken with the suspected shooter and are in contact with his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known if the attacker had any connection to his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.
One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspected shooter left the classroom at the beginning of Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned near the end of class, he knocked to get back in. Another student tried to open the door, but Lyela said they noticed the gun and did not open the door. She said the shooter went into the classroom next door and opened fire.
Hosey said there is no evidence that other schools were attacked, but investigators are “pursuing all leads about possible connections of the shooter involved in this incident.” There is also no evidence that another shooter was involved, nor any indication of a list of schools attacked.
“However, there is a lot of evidence that is currently being secured and evaluated,” Hosey added.
While law enforcement investigates the shooting and the motive behind it, Smith warned it could take “several days” to get answers.
Kemp thanked first responders and other officers who responded to the shooting on Wednesday.
“This is the worst nightmare for all of us and I would like to express my sincere condolences and prayers to the families who have lost loved ones, to those injured and to those who continue to endure this tragic time,” Kemp said.
Hosey called the high school’s teachers and staff “heroes” who worked to protect the students.
“The heroes we need to remember are our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroes in what they did. The protocols activated today in this school and this system prevented this from being a much bigger tragedy than we had here today, so I want to commend them.”
Kathrine Maldonado overslept and missed school on 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 started visiting group chats, where they learned that a friend had been killed and at least two others had been injured.
“When I found out, I started crying and just got angry because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.
Kathrine said her boyfriend, who died in the shooting, was known as the class clown and described him as a “sweet person.”
Other Apalachee High School students say they are still processing today’s tragedy in which their classmates and teachers were gunned down.
“It was pretty difficult because so much happened in a relatively short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was pretty hard to process.”
Another student, 14-year-old daughter Macey Right, said she was worried about returning to school.
“I really don’t want to go back. I don’t think I should have to go back to school worrying about my death,” Right said. “I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be at the end of the year and worrying about my career.”
