WINDER, Ga. — More than a year ago, tips about online posts threatening a school shooting led Georgia police to question a 13-year-old boy, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. On Wednesday, that boy opened fire at his high school outside Atlanta, killing four people and wounding nine, officials said.
The teen has been charged as an adult in the deaths of 14-year-old Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo 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 at the school in Winder, about an hour northeast of Atlanta — were taken to the hospital with injuries. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
The now 14-year-old teenager was scheduled to be taken to a regional juvenile detention center on Thursday.
Armed with an assault rifle, the teenager pointed the weapon at students in the school hallway when his classmates refused to open the door so he could return to his math classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.
The teen had left the second-period algebra classroom earlier, and Sayarath suspected that the quiet student who had recently transferred was skipping again.
But he came back later and wanted to go back to the classroom. Some students wanted to open the locked door, but instead they went back.
“I guess they saw something, but for some reason they didn’t open the door,” Sayarath said.
As she looked at him through a window in the door, she saw the student turn around and heard a barrage of gunfire.
“There were about 10 or 15 at a time, right behind each other,” she said.
The math students dove to the ground and occasionally crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.
Two school officers encountered the shooter within minutes of a 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 was able to contain the threats and refer the case to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, which borders Barrow County.
The sheriff’s office interviewed the then-13-year-old and his father, who said there were shotguns in the house but the teen didn’t have unescorted access to them. The teen also denied making threats online.
The sheriff’s office alerted local schools to monitor the teen, but there was no probable cause for an arrest or additional action, the FBI said.
Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children Services also had prior contact with the teen and will investigate whether that is related to the shooting. Local news outlets reported that police searched the teen’s home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school, on Wednesday.
“All those students who had to watch their teachers and classmates die, those who had to walk out of school limping, who looked traumatized,” Sayarath said, “that is the result of not taking control.”
Authorities are still investigating how the teen obtained the weapon used in the shooting and how he brought it into the school of about 1,900 students in Barrow County, a rapidly urbanizing area on the edge of Atlanta’s sprawling metropolis.
It was the the last among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have fueled heated debates about gun control and rattled parents whose children grow up practicing active shooter scenarios in their classrooms. But they have done little to improve the nation’s gun laws.
Before Wednesday there were 29 mass murders 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 these homicides, 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.
On Wednesday night, hundreds gathered at Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder for a vigil. Volunteers handed out candles, as well as 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 condolence.
Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended the vigil because he needed grounding and a safe space.
He was practicing with the band when the lockdown was announced. He said it felt like a normal practice as students lined up to hide in the band closet.
“When we heard banging on the door and the SWAT team came to take us out, I knew it was serious,” he said. “I just started shaking and crying.”
He finally calmed down once he got to the football stadium. “I just prayed that everyone I love was safe,” he said.
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Associated Press reporters 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.