Georgia High School Mass shooting

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A 14-year-old student suspected of gunning down four people at his Georgia high school Wednesday was previously investigated in connection with threats to carry out a school shooting, federal authorities said.

The suspect, then 13, was a possible suspect in connection with threats made online last year using photos of guns, the FBI’s Atlanta field office said in a joint statement with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.

Within 24 hours, law enforcement officers interviewed the suspected gunman, who is not named in the statement but was identified earlier by local authorities as Colt Gray, in connection with the threats, the statement says.

The suspect denied making the threats, the statement says. His father, who was also interviewed, told investigators he had hunting guns in the home but his son did not have unsupervised access to them, according to the statement.

Authorities told local schools to continue monitoring the suspect, the statement says, but there was no probable cause to arrest him. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said authorities are looking at whether the 2023 threat is connected to Wednesday's shooting.

A possible motive remained unclear and Smith said it isn’t known if the suspect had specific targets when he allegedly opened fire, Smith said. The sheriff said investigators from his office and the state law enforcement agency were interviewing the teen.

Smith said those who were injured are expected to recover.

The superintendent of Barrow County School District, which Apalachee High School belongs to, said schools would remain closed for the rest of the week “as we fully cooperate to get answers to the many questions we have about what happened here.”

I have an idea.
The constitution protects gun ownership and the NRA love collecting guns.
How about they ban all bullets and munitions instead?
The guns could go in display cases empty.

I have an idea.
The constitution protects gun ownership and the NRA love collecting guns.
How about they ban all bullets and munitions instead?
The guns could go in display cases empty.

The 14-year-old charged with murder in the shooting at a high school in Georgia had shown interest in prior mass shootings, particularly the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.

The information came as a result of the searches conducted in the investigation into the shooting.

Separately, according to newly released documents, law enforcement officials who last year interviewed the teen did not arrest him then because they could not tie him to an online account that had made threats to carry out a school shooting

The teen fatally shot four people — two teachers and two students — on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder on his first full day as a new student there, authorities said. He has been charged as an adult. Winder is in Barrow County, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.

According to the investigative documents, the FBI received a tip in May 2023 from a user on Discord, a chat platform popular with online video game enthusiasts, about online threats to commit a shooting at a middle school. The FBI traced the Discord account to a person with the same name as the teen’s father and referred the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, where the teen was enrolled at Jefferson Middle School.

The sheriff’s office interviewed the teenager and his father, who said he wasn’t familiar with Discord and did not play video games. The teen told the sheriff’s office that he once had a Discord account but had deleted it. The teen denied making any online threats and “expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the documents state.

The local authorities ultimately “cleared” the case because the FBI tip was inconsistent with the information discovered during their investigation, according to the documents.

Among the inconsistencies, according to the documents, was that the Discord account was associated with the teen’s email address, but the phone number on the account did not match the teen’s.

The account was traced to a series of possible IP addresses in Buffalo, New York, and in other parts of Georgia, including Fort Valley and Statesboro, where the teen had not lived, according to the investigative report.

The email associated with the user’s profile name was written in Russian and translated to the last name of a school shooter. The teen’s father told an investigator that neither he nor his son spoke Russian, the report said.

The teen said he was not active on Discord at the time the threat was made and had stopped using it because his account had been hacked multiple times “and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” according to the report.

The law enforcement official told the teen’s dad that he could not substantiate the tip from the FBI or that the father or son was behind the Discord account that made the threat. The case was then cleared, but Jackson County authorities “alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject,” the FBI said Wednesday.

It is not clear whether Barrow County schools were also aware of the investigation or were “monitoring” when the teen enrolled there last month.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Thursday that the teen was new to Barrow county schools, having enrolled two weeks ago. Wednesday was his second day at Apalachee High School and his first full day, Smith said.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Smith said the sheriff’s office learned about last year's investigation on Wednesday, about two hours after the shooting.

Smith said he was confident that the previous tips had been investigated properly by the FBI and local law enforcement.

“Local authorities went to the house, interviewed him, interviewed his father, they did a report, they did what they were supposed to do, and found that there was no proper cause” to arrest him, Smith said. “Regardless of the situation, all of us have civil rights. He didn’t commit a crime. He made a comment. It was unfounded at the time.”

But Isaiah Hooks, 15, a football player at the high school said it was difficult to swallow news that some authorities were aware of and monitoring the teen.

A new panic alarm system that was triggered during Wednesday’s deadly shooting at a Georgia high school likely saved countless lives, authorities and advocates for the technology said.

Lockdown warnings flashed on classroom screens at Apalachee High School as gunshots rang out, prompting students and teachers to lock the door, turn off the lights and huddle in the farthest corner from the entrance, witnesses said.

At the same time, alerts automatically went out to law enforcement officers, who responded and ended the shooting rampage within minutes, according to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith and Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.

“The protocols at this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy,” Hosey said at a news conference Wednesday night.

Apalachee High School teachers all wear ID badges with their photos and panic buttons that, if repeatedly pressed, will notify authorities about an “active situation” or emergency at the school, Smith said.

“That was pressed,” the sheriff said.

Stephen Kreyenbuhl, an Apalachee social studies teacher, said the small button is on the back of the badge. If the button is pressed four times, administrators and school resource officers are contacted. If the button is pressed eight times, the sheriff’s office is also notified.

Kreyenbuhl, 26, whose classroom was near the gunman, said the emergency procedure had already been initiated before he heard the first gunshots.

He followed protocol and then prepared to either defend himself and his students with a pair of scissors in his back pocket or die.

“I definitely felt like death was in the room for a second," he said. "I did accept the fact that I might die.”

Kreyenbuhl, a third-year teacher, said it was the first time the panic button had been triggered at Apalachee, which has been in session since Aug. 1.

Smith said the panic alarm system at Apalachee, powered by Georgia-based safety solutions company Centegix, has only been in place at the school for about a week.

Other companies also offer technologies that claim to improve real-time reporting in emergency situations, NBC News has previously reported.

Centegix, in particular, advocates for Alyssa’s Law — a measure, passed in seven states and introduced in nine others, that would require schools to install silent panic alarms that are directly linked to law enforcement.

The legislation is named after Alyssa Alhadeff, who was killed during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The 14-year-old was fatally shot trying to hide under a classroom table, her mother said.

Since then, Alyssa's mother, Lori Alhadeff, has been advocating for ways to make schools safer, including panic buttons.

“I wish it never had to be used,” she said. “I wish there was never a school shooter, but I know that Alyssa is saving lives. Every press of that panic button, Alyssa is saving lives.”

On Thursday, Smith told NBC News that Centegix sent alerts of an active shooter at Apalachee High School to the Barrow County Sheriff’s office around 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The company also sent authorities GPS coordinates of the person who triggered the alert, he said.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers were already on the campus when the sheriff’s team arrived, Smith said. “When we got there, we basically went into action,” he said.

Smith said that, within five or six minutes, school resource officers confronted the suspect and took him into custody.

“They gave him verbal commands. He dropped the gun and went on the ground,” the sheriff said. “They’re telling me within six minutes of the first Centegix hit on the thing, on the alert, that he was in custody by that time.”

ophomore Cameron Leroy was in class Wednesday morning when an unfamiliar noise pulsated from the hallway just after 10 a.m.

When it didn't stop, his teacher at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, took action: He ordered students to crouch down in the corners of the classroom. He turned off the lights, locked the door and propped up a large touchscreen board to block the entrance.

For 30 terrifying minutes, the students hid motionless, and Leroy prayed for safety as the barrage of gunfire was eventually replaced by emergency sirens and the shouts of police officers.

"It was this very haunting moment for everyone," Leroy, 15, said on NBC News Now.

Once home, he said, he was "still in a state of shock." But the chaotic events sunk in when he learned one of those killed was Richard Aspinwall, his geometry teacher and an assistant football coach.

"Never," Leroy said of thinking that the active shooter trainings would be applied in a real-life scenario.

"Even when it happened, we were prepared, but it's not something you're going to expect in a normal day of school," he added. "You think you're going to go to school for seven hours, learn, come home to your family."

saiah Hooks, 15, said he was in science class with about 20 students when the shooting occurred. He could hear screams, and the class mobilized to an area that connected to another classroom where they could shelter in place.

He would later learn that one of the victims was a classmate, and another was Aspinwall, his defensive coach on the school football team.

"Some of us are still pretty shaken up," Hooks said Thursday. "It's going to take a while for us to get over all this."

Jaden Hunter, 17, said he was on the computer in engineering class when the computers showed an alert that the school was on lockdown. Screams were coming from down the hall. At first, he said, he didn't know if it was a surprise drill, but his teacher told the class to "go hide and get into a safe place."

His classmates pulled out their phones to text their friends. Hunter said a friend closer to the shooting wrote him: "There was blood everywhere."

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Northeast Georgia Health System said it not only treated physical injuries, but also multiple people with symptoms of panic attacks and anxiety.

School was canceled for the rest of the week and grief counselors were being made available.

Ariel Bowling was about to leave her classroom with a friend to go to a vending machine when the shooting began nearby. The pair raced back inside the classroom.

Panicked, Bowling said she called her mother, who told her not to joke about an active shooter but quickly realized her daughter was serious.

Tabitha Bowling said she told her daughter to hide in the corner and listen to directions.

"At that time, I heard five gunshots and then the phone went dead," Tabitha Bowling, recounting the events with her daughter on NBC's "TODAY" show, said Thursday. She added: "I was very scared."

Eventually, after an all-clear was given, Ariel Bowling exited the classroom and walked past a body covered with a sheet and someone with a gunshot wound to her leg.

Frantic parents were able to reconnect with their children in the school's football field.

A day after the shooting, Ariel Bowling said she is traumatized and told her mom that she is too scared to return to school. Some students at Apalachee have expressed the need for more security measures.

"You're basically never safe anywhere," Bowling said, "and no matter if there are cops in the school, there's still no safety at all."

The father of the 14-year-old student accused of opening fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, has been arrested and charged with murder in connection with the deadly shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday.

Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the GBI said.

At a news conference on Thursday evening, Chris Hosey, director of the GBI said that the father was arrested for "knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon."

His son has also been charged with four counts of felony murder, with additional charges expected, the GBI said.

In Australia, following the Port Arthur Mass shooting, the prime minister initiated a "Gun buy back" scheme where owners of high powered rifles were given a amnesty to hand over their weapons and would be compensated. All the guns were then crushed and recycled.

The press coverage is persistently reporting that "one of the victims was autistic". Why? What meaning are they trying to convey? What relevance does that have? It appears that all the victims were random last minute targets, not personally selected. Presumably they think other victims are neurotypical, however I have never seen reporting stating "all the victims were neurotypical". This is bothering me....

New Zealand did the same in 2019 after the Christchurch massacre. To stop the killer further gloating about his terrible crimes the PM asked that his name not be used in any reference to the mass murder after he was tried and convicted. He will never be released from prison - it is a life sentence. His name is never spoken.

14-year-old suspect's father arrested, charged with murder

Holy s**t