Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, saw a shooting on Wednesday that left four people dead and numerous others injured.
According to USA Today, the victims are two teachers and two students. The victims are Christina Irimie, 53, Richard Aspinwall, 39, Christian Angulo, 14, and Mason Schermerhorn, 14.
Colt Gray, 14, a student at the school, was arrested and charged with murder.
Authorities confirmed that Gray will be prosecuted as an adult.
The suspect, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, used an AR-style rifle, and the manner in which the weapon was acquired and brought into the school is still being looked into.
Nine people were admitted to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, including eight students and one teacher, according to GBI Director Chris Hosey.
As a precaution following the shooting, all schools in Barrow County were placed on lockdown.
Community reacts
Barrow County Sheriff, Jud Smith, emphasised the gravity of the situation, calling it “an evil thing.”
“This is a very, very fluid investigation,” Smith said in a news conference outside the school. “What you see behind us is an evil thing,” Smith said.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden also extended their condolences, calling for urgent action on gun control legislation.
“We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” Biden said.
“What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” Biden said. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
Killing figures in US since 2006
A database maintained by Northeastern University, the Associated Press, and USA Today indicates that Wednesday’s massacre is the 604th mass murder in American history that results in the deaths of four or more people since 2006. The database has tracked 3,120 fatalities in mass killings across the United States in 18 years.
A USA Today analysis of the data found Gray is the youngest suspected school shooter behind a mass killing since at least 2006.
According to a recent study, the 2023–24 school year saw a sharp increase in shootings, with at least 144 instances of gun violence. This fall, the Georgia massacre is the first mass killing at a school. Gun violence at schools claimed 36 lives and injured 87 more in the previous academic year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety and David Riedman, the creator of the K–12 School Shooting Database.
FBI tipped in 2023
Gray, the alleged shooter in Georgia, was questioned by local law enforcement in 2023, FBI Atlanta revealed on X on Wednesday.
Anonymous tips regarding online threats pertaining to a school shooting were received by the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center in May 2023. The threats included gun images but lacked details on location or timing.
After receiving this information from the FBI, Gray and his father were interviewed by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
FBI Atlanta said that the father, who is not identified in the article, told the sheriff’s office that he had hunting guns at home but that his son did not have “unsupervised access” to them at the time.
Gray, who was 13 at the time, denied making the threats online, according to FBI Atlanta, and Jackson County alerted local schools for “continued monitoring” of him.
FBI Atlanta said that there was no probable cause for arrest or further action by law enforcement at the time.
Apalachee High School is in Barrow County and not a part of Jackson County schools. It is unclear whether Gray attended a school in Jackson County before moving into the Barrow County School District.
Schools closed
All Barrow County schools were placed on lockdown Wednesday morning as a precaution. Schools would stay closed for the remainder of the week, and students would have access to crisis counseling, according to a later announcement from Superintendent Dallas LeDuff.
About 1,900 students attend Apalachee High, one of the two high schools in the district, which is located in Winder, a small Georgian town close to Athens.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
