What we know about the Georgia high school shooting suspect accused of killing 4 people and injuring 9

Four people died and nine others were injured after a 14-year-old student opened fire On Wednesday at Apalachee High School in northern Georgia, authorities said. More information about the suspect emerged as officials try to figure out how the teen obtained the gun and determine a motive for the attack. latest school shooting In the United States

Previous advice on threats

More than a year ago, Georgia police questioned a 13-year-old boy after receiving information about online posts threatening a school shooting, but investigators did not have enough evidence to arrest him. On Wednesday, that boy opened fire at his high school outside Atlanta, killing four people and wounding nine, according to authorities.

The teen, identified as Colt Gray, 14, 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 a teacher from the Winder school, about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All are expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.

Gray is currently being held at the Gainesville Regional Juvenile Detention Center, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice spokesman Glenn Allen told CBS News on Thursday.

Volley of gunfire

Armed with an assault rifle, the teen pointed the gun at students in a school hallway when his classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.

The teenager had left the second period algebra classroom earlier, and Sayarath figured the quiet student who had recently transferred was skipping school again.

But he returned later and wanted to go back to the classroom. Some students went to open the locked door, but instead they walked away.

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

When he looked through a window in the door, he saw the student turn around and heard a burst of gunfire.

“There were about 10 or 15 at a time, one after the other,” he said.

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

Two school police officers encountered the shooter minutes after a report of gunfire spread, Hosey said. The teen immediately turned himself in and was taken into custody.

According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, police were notified of the threat thanks to a new security system which had been installed about a week earlier. Smith noted that there were three school resource officers on campus at the time of the shooting.

Teenager previously interviewed by the FBI

The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous information in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement.

FBI Atlanta he said on social media On Wednesday night, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center discovered the posts were coming from Georgia, and “the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office forwarded the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office,” which is adjacent to Barrow County.

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

The sheriff’s office alerted local schools to continue monitoring the teen, but there was no probable cause for his arrest or further action, the FBI said.

Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children Services had also had prior contact with the teen and will investigate whether that has any connection to the shooting. Local media reported that police on Wednesday searched the teen’s family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school.

“All the students who had to watch their teachers and classmates die, who had to limp out of school, who looked traumatized,” Sayarath said, “that’s the consequence of not taking control.”

Authorities were still investigating how the teenager obtained the gun used in the shooting and brought it to the school with about 1,900 students in Barrow County, a rapidly suburbanizing area on the edge of the ever-expanding Atlanta metropolitan area.

Worrying trend

It was the last among Dozens of school shootings in the United States in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Modeled landscapeFlorida, and UvaldeTexas. The classroom killings have sparked heated debates over gun control and rankled parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills in classrooms. But they have done little to change the nation’s gun laws.

As of Wednesday, there had been 29 mass killings in the United States so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in such killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

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

Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended the vigil because he needed to feel grounded and be in a safe place.

He was practicing with the band when the lockdown order was issued. He said it looked like a normal drill as students lined up to hide in the band closet.

“When we heard banging on the door and the SWAT team came to get us out, I knew it was serious,” she said. “I started shaking and crying.”

She finally calmed down when she arrived at the football stadium. “I was just praying that all my loved ones were safe,” she said.