The 14-year-old suspect in the fatal mass shooting at a Winder, Georgia, high school will be booked Wednesday night, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at an evening news conference.
Colt Gray will be charged with murder in connection with the deaths of two teachers and two students at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, authorities said.
The deceased victims were 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, and Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, according to Hosey. The school’s website shows the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.
Gray is a student at Apalachee High School and will be handled as an adult as he moves through the court system, Hosey said at an earlier news conference.
Nine other victims – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals following the Wednesday morning shooting, according to the GBI.
Hosey said the gun was an AR-platform weapon while a law enforcement official earlier told CNN it was an AR-15-style.
The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information.
During the shooting, 14-year-old Macey Right texted her mom saying she heard gunshots and asked her mother to come get her. Right and her friends held hands and prayed in their classroom, she said. Moments later, they were disrupted by banging and yelling, according to Macey.
“I heard gunshots outside my classroom and people screaming, people begging not to get shot, and then people sitting beside me just shaking and crying,” Macey said.
Follow live updates: Police respond to reported shooting at Georgia high school
Authorities spoke to suspect and his father last year
The suspect was interviewed by local law enforcement in May 2023 after the FBI received “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time,” according to a joint statement from the FBI’s Atlanta office and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
The online threats included photographs of guns, the statement said.
“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said. “The subject denied making the threats online.”
The FBI said there was no probable cause for an arrest at the time.
Wednesday’s shooting is the deadliest of the 45 school shootings so far this calendar year, according to a CNN analysis. It is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings.
Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. A school resource deputy assigned to Apalachee High confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters.
Witness sat next to suspected shooter
Lyela Sayarath, 16, told CNN the alleged shooter sat next to her in an algebra class.
She said he left class early, around 9:45 a.m., but didn’t take a bathroom pass. She thought he might be skipping.
Toward the end of class, someone told her teacher over the loudspeaker to check their email, she said.
Shortly after, Gray was outside the classroom door, which was shut, Lyela said. Another student who went to the door jumped backwards when she saw he had a gun.
“I guess he saw we weren’t gonna let him in,” Lyela said. “And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open, so I think he just started shooting in the classroom.”
At first, she told CNN she heard a burst of gunfire – maybe 10 to 15 shots – and then they were “kind of just one after another.”
Students dropped to the floor and crawled to the corner, Lyela said.
“It seemed like this wasn’t something he planned too well or that he wasn’t really strong with the gun because he didn’t try and shoot our door. Once he saw he couldn’t get in our room, he just went to the next one.”
Latest developments
• The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call.
• Investigators have spoken to the suspected shooter and have been in touch with his family, Smith said.
• It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.
• Schools in Barrow County will be closed the rest of the week.
• The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.
Student texted mom: ‘I’m scared’
Erin Clark was at work Wednesday morning when she got a series of text messages from her son, a senior, who was attending class at Apalachee High School.
“School shooting.”
“I’m scared,” he wrote.
“pls” “i’m not joking,” the flurry of messages said.
“I’m leaving work,” Clark replied. “I love you,” her son, Ethan Haney, 17, wrote back.
“Love you too baby,” his mom texted before racing to the high school.
Clark told CNN her son heard eight or nine gunshots before he closed his classroom door and, with the help of another classmate, moved chairs and tables to block the door.
Clark told CNN she was “absolutely terrified” when she read her son’s messages. “Just kept praying he’d stay safe,” she said.
Schools in county went into lockdown
As emergency responders came from several counties, video from outside the school showed at least five ambulances and a large law enforcement presence at the campus, and at least one medical helicopter could be seen airlifting a patient from the scene.
At the football field, where authorities had students gather, people lowered their heads and formed a prayer circle in the end zone, standing on the letters for “Apalachee” as their classmates milled around the field.
All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there are no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.
Some of the critically injured were removed by helicopter, and additional helicopters are on standby.
Atlanta trauma center, other hospitals take patients
Grady Health System – a Level 1 trauma center in Atlanta, about an hour drive from Winder – received one gunshot wound victim from the incident who was transported by helicopter, a hospital spokesperson told CNN.
Earlier, a source with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital in North Georgia received two victims from the shooting. The source said one victim is an adult with a gunshot wound to the stomach and was in surgery, and another is a minor with unspecified injuries.
Three gunshot victims were taken to nearby hospitals following the shooting, according to a hospital official, and five other patients reported to the hospital with symptoms related to a panic attack.
Two gunshot victims were taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow with non-life threatening injuries, Northeast Georgia Health System spokesperson Layne Saliba said. Four other patients came with symptoms related to panic attacks.
Another gunshot victim was taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Gainesville with non-life threatening injuries, Saliba said, and an additional patient came to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Braselton with symptoms related to a panic attack.
Georgia governor sends prayers and says he can send resources
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.”
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident, the White House said, offering federal support to state and local officials.
“His administration will continue coordinating with federal, state, and local officials as we receive more information,” the White House said in a statement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland similarly said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting.
“We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.
Winder had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN’s Isabel Rosales reported from Winder, while Nick Valencia reported from Atlanta. CNN’s John Miller and Dakin Andone reported from New York. Taylor Galgano, Jaide Timm-Garcia, Holly Yan, Steve Almasy, Josh Campbell, Maureen Chowdhury, Amy O’Kruk, Alex Leeds Matthews, Shawn Nottingham, Rebekah Riess, Devan Cole, Hannah Rabinowitz and Mark Morales contributed to this report.
