Teen accused of killing 4 at Apalachee High School was previously subject to reported threats – WABE

More than a year ago, tips about online posts threatening a school shooting prompted Georgia police to question a 13-year-old boy, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. On Wednesday, the boy opened fire at his high school outside Atlanta, killing four people and wounding nine, officials said.

The teenager has been charged as an adult in connection with the deaths of Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers 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 teenager, now 14, is scheduled to be transferred to a regional juvenile detention center on Thursday.

The teenager, armed with an assault rifle, fired at students in a school hallway when classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra class, said his classmate Lyela Sayarath.

The teenager had left his algebra classroom early, and Sayarat assumed the quiet student, who had recently transferred, was skipping school again.

But later he came back and wanted to go back to the classroom. Some students went to open the closed door, but instead they backed out.

“I suspect they saw something, but for some reason they didn’t open the door,” Sayarath said.

As she looked at him through the door window, she saw the student turn around and she heard a series of gunshots.

“There were about 10 or 15 of them at once, one after the other,” she said.

The math students crouched on the floor and occasionally crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.

Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes of the report of shots fired, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was arrested.

The teen was questioned 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 scope of the threats and referred the case to the sheriff’s office in Jackson County, which neighbors Barrow County.

The sheriff’s office interviewed the 13-year-old and his father, who said there were hunting rifles in the home but the teen did not have free access to them. The teen also denied making threats online.

The sheriff’s office notified local schools to continue monitoring the teen, but there was no probable cause to arrest or take additional action, the FBI said.

Hosey said the state Department of Family and Children’s Services also had prior contact with the teen and will investigate whether it has anything to do with the shooting. Local news agencies reported that law enforcement searched the teen’s family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school, on Wednesday.

“All the students who had to watch their teachers and classmates die, those who had to limp out of school, those who looked terrified,” Sayarat said, “are the consequences of a lack of control.”

Authorities are still investigating how the teenager obtained the gun used in the shooting and brought it into the school of about 1,900 students in Barrow County, a rapidly growing suburban area on the edge of the growing Atlanta metropolitan area.

It was the latest in dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including notably deadly ones in Newtown, Conn., Parkland, Fla., and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have sparked heated debates over gun control and rattled parents whose children grow up with active-shooter drills in the classroom. But they have done little to change the nation’s gun laws.

Before Wednesday, there had been 29 mass killings in the U.S. this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people died in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people die within 24 hours, excluding the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

Hundreds of people gathered at Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder on Wednesday evening for a vigil. Volunteers handed out candles, as well as water, pizza and tissues. Some knelt as a Methodist pastor led the crowd in prayer after a Barrow County commissioner read a Jewish prayer of mourning.

Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended the vigil because he needed a sense of security and stability.

He was at band practice when the lockdown was imposed. He said it felt like regular practice as students lined up to hide in the band closet.

“When we heard the pounding on the door and the SWAT (team) came to get us out, that’s when I knew it was serious,” he said. “I just started shaking and crying.”

He finally calmed down when he was at the football stadium. “I just prayed that everyone I loved would be safe,” he said.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Sharon Johnson, Mike Stewart and Erik Verduzco in Winder; Beatrice Dupuy in New York; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Charlotte Kramon, Kate Brumback and Jeff Martin in Atlanta; and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska.