A 14-year-old student killed two classmates and two teachers, and injured nine others in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday. This incident marks the first mass shooting on a U.S. campus since the beginning of the school year.
The suspect, Colt Gray, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting. Law enforcement had previously interviewed Gray last year concerning online threats related to a potential school shooting. He will face charges and be tried as an adult, according to Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The gunman, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, surrendered to school deputies without resistance.
The victims have been identified as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, along with teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. All nine individuals hospitalized are expected to recover. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith described the event as an act of “pure evil.”
The FBI revealed that it had previously investigated online threats related to a school shooting and had interviewed a 13-year-old and his father in nearby Jackson County. Although the father had hunting guns, the child did not have unsupervised access to them, and no arrest was made due to lack of probable cause.
The shooting has reignited the national debate on gun control and prompted an outpouring of grief. In Winder, a city of 18,000 located about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, residents gathered in a park for a candlelight vigil. City Councilman Power Evans addressed the crowd, emphasizing the community’s solidarity and shared grief.
President Joe Biden, who has been briefed on the shooting, has called for “common-sense gun safety legislation,” urging bipartisan cooperation to address gun violence. Vice President Kamala Harris described the shooting as a “senseless tragedy” and called for an end to the “epidemic of gun violence.”
Former President Donald Trump expressed condolences on social media, condemning the attack as the act of a “sick and deranged monster.” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, while acknowledging the tragedy, deferred political discussions in favor of focusing on the investigation and mourning the victims.
David Riedman, who manages the K-12 School Shooting Database, noted that this was the first “planned attack” at a school this fall. The U.S. has experienced numerous school shootings over the past two decades, with the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 being one of the deadliest. The persistent violence continues to fuel the ongoing debate over gun laws and the Second Amendment.
