More than a year ago, tips about online posts threatening a school shooting led Georgia police to interview a 13-year-old boy, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest. On Wednesday, that boy opened fire at his high school outside Atlanta and killed four people and wounded nine, officials said.
The teen has been charged as an adult in the deaths of Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and instructors Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference.
At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder, about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
The teen, now 14, was to be taken to a regional youth detention facility on Thursday.
Armed with an assault-style rifle, the teen turned the gun on students in a hallway at the school when classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.
The teen earlier left the second period algebra classroom, and Sayarath figured the quiet student who recently transferred was skipping school again.
“It was about 10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back,” she said.
Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes after a report of shots fired went out, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.
The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement.
The FBI narrowed the threats down and referred to the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, which is adjacent to Barrow County.
The sheriff’s office interviewed the then-13-year-old and his father, who said there were hunting guns in the house but the teen did not have unsupervised access to them. The teen also denied making any online threats.
The sheriff’s office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the teen, but there was no probable cause for arrest or additional action, the FBI said.
Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children’s Services also had previous contact with the teen and will investigate whether that has any connection with the shooting. Local news outlets reported that law enforcement on Wednesday searched the teen’s family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school.
“It makes me scared to send him back,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Traffic going to the school was backed up for more than a mile as parents tried to get to their children there.
“I have directed all available state resources to respond to the incident at Apalachee High School and urge all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state," Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement.
“We will continue to work with local, state, and federal partners as we gather information and further respond to this situation,” Kemp added.
In a statement, the FBI's Atlanta office said: “FBI Atlanta is aware of the current situation at Apalachee High School in Barrow County. Our agents are on scene coordinating with and supporting local law enforcement.”
The White House said President Joe Biden has been briefed by his Homeland Security Advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randall, about the shooting and the administration will coordinate with federal, state and local officials as it receives more information.
Apalachee High School has about 1,900 students, according to records from Georgia education officials. It became Barrow County's second largest public high school when it opened in 2000, according to the Barrow County School System. It’s named after the Apalachee River on the southern edge of Barrow County.
The shooting had reverberations in Atlanta, where patrols of schools in that city were beefed up, authorities said. More patrols of Atlanta schools would be done “for the rest of the day out of an abundance of caution,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said.
(AP Photo Mike Stewart)
