WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A 14-year-old student opened fire at a Georgia high school and killed four people on Wednesday, authorities said, sending students scrambling for shelter in their classrooms — and eventually to the football stadium — as officers swarmed the campus and parents raced to find out if their children were safe.
The dead were identified as two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, about an hour’s drive from Atlanta. Killed were two other 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and instructors Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said in a nighttime news conference.
At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
The words “hard lockdown” appeared on a screen in junior Layla Ferrell's health class and lights began flashing. She and her frightened classmates piled desks and chairs in front of the door to create a barricade, she recalled.
Sophomore Kaylee Abner was in geometry class when she heard the gunshots. She and her classmates ducked behind their teacher’s desk, and then the teacher began flipping the desk in an attempt to barricade the classroom door, Abner said. A classmate beside her was praying, and she held his hand while they all waited for police.
After students poured into the football stadium, Abner saw teachers who had taken off their shirts to help treat gunshot wounds.
Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes after a report of shots fired went out, Hosey said. The suspect, a student at the school, immediately surrendered and was taken into custody. He is being charged as an adult with murder. Authorities said the weapon was an assault-style rifle.
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 to 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.
Authorities were still looking into how the suspect obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school in Barrow County, a rapidly suburbanizing area on the edge of metro Atlanta's ever-expanding sprawl.
At an afternoon news conference, Smith choked up as he began to speak. He said he was born and raised in the community and his kids are in the school system.
“My heart hurts for these kids. My heart hurts for our community,” he said. “But I want to make it very clear that hate will not prevail in this county. I want that to be very clear and known. Love will prevail over what happened today.”
It was the the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills in classrooms. But they have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Before Wednesday, there had been 29 mass killings in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
Last year ended with 217 deaths from 42 mass killings, making 2023 one of the deadliest years on record for such shootings in the country.
On Wednesday in Winder, Landon Culver, an 11th grader, said he had stepped out of his algebra class to get a drink of water when he heard shots and then saw someone wearing a black hoodie with a long gun.
“I didn’t really stick around too long to look,” he said.
Instead he ran back inside the classroom and locked the door. The class huddled in the back in the dark and waited for the rampage to end. Culver listened as gunshots rang out in the building.
“You’re just wondering like, which one of those is going to be somebody that you’re best friends with or somebody that you love?” he said.
Later police officers arrived and escorted the students out. As they were leaving the building, Culver saw “multiple people who had been shot.”
“You hear about this kind of stuff, but you like never think it’s going to happen to you until like it’s happening.”
When Erin Clark, 42, received a text from her son Ethan, a senior, saying there was an active shooter, she rushed from her job at the Amazon warehouse to the school. The two texted “I love you,” and Clark prayed for her him as she drove.
With the main road to the school blocked, she parked and ran with other parents. They were directed to the football field, and amid the chaos, Clark found Ethan sitting on the bleachers.
Clark said her son was writing an essay in class when he first heard gunfire. He worked with his classmates to barricade the door and hide.
“I’m so proud of him for doing that,” she said. “He was so brave.”
“It makes me scared to send him back,” Clark 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. Barrow County schools will be closed for the rest of the week as they cooperate with the investigation, but grief counseling will be available.
“It’s just outrageous that every day, in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive," Vice President Kamala Harris said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
In a message posted to social media, former President Donald Trump said: “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who canceled a speech planned for the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas and returned to the state, said in a statement: “This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event.”
Apalachee High School opened in 2000 and has about 1,900 students, according to records from Georgia education officials.
On Wednesday evening, hundreds gathered in Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder for a vigil. Volunteers handed out candles and also water, pizza and tissues. Some knelt as a Methodist minister led the crowd in prayer after a Barrow County commissioner read a Jewish prayer of mourning.
Some were clad in athletic gear from Apalachee’s crosstown rival, Winder-Barrow High School. At the end of the vigil, someone released balloons in Apalachee’s blue, gold and white.
Sophomore Shantal Sanvee, who was in a classroom near the gunshots, said she saw “a whole lot of blood. And it was just, it was just horrible.”
“I don't think I want to be here for like a long time now,” Sanvee said.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of teacher Christina Irimie's first name and Richard Aspinwall's last name.
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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, contributed.
Jeff Amy, The Associated Press