Multiple deaths in Georgia high school shooting, suspect held in custody

Washington: Vice President Kamala Harris has made an impassioned plea for America to “end the epidemic of gun violence” after four people were killed by a teenage gunman at a Georgia high school in yet another mass shooting.

Two 14-year-old students and two teachers were killed and another nine people were injured in the carnage at Apalachee High School in Winder, a small city about 80 kilometres north-east of Atlanta.

A 14-year-old student at the school, Colt Gray, has been named as the suspect. He surrendered to officers and was taken into custody.

The incident took place on Wednesday morning, US time, after Gray opened fire on his peers and teachers, sending them scrambling for shelter in classrooms and eventually fleeing to the football stadium as police swarmed the campus.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith described the incident as “pure evil”.

“My heart hurts for these kids. My heart hurts for our community. But I want to make it very clear that hate will not prevail in this community,” he said during a brief press conference. “Love will prevail over what happened today – I assure you that.”

The teen had been interviewed 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 narrowed the threats down and referred the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, adjacent to Barrow County.

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

Mourners listen to a speaker during a candlelight vigil for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.Credit: AP

The FBI said the sheriff’s office alerted local schools to monitor the teen, but there was no probable cause for an arrest or additional action.

Declaring that “it doesn’t have to be this way,” Harris took a moment to address the attack before making an economic policy announcement in New Hampshire.

“It’s just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive,” said Harris, who last year praised Australia’s gun reforms during a state visit to Washington by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“It’s senseless. It is. We’ve got to stop it, and we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.”

Authorities were still looking into how the suspect obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school in Barrow County, a rapidly suburbanising area on the edge of metro Atlanta. At an afternoon news conference, officials would not say what type of gun was used.

The shooting is believed to be the worst episode of school violence in Georgia’s history, but merely the latest among dozens across the US. As of September 4, there have been 385 mass shootings in America this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people die, not including the killer.

The local sheriff said officers were dispatched to Apalachee High School at approximately 10.23am on Wednesday (US time), and there was soon a heavy police presence.

Students – who began the new school year last month – were placed on lockdown, which some initially thought was a drill.

But as reports emerged online of an active shooter on site, many barricaded themselves in classrooms while others fled to the local football field.

Jacob King, a sophomore football player, said he had dozed off in his world history class after a morning training session when he heard about 10 gunshots.

A medical helicopter is seen in front of Apalachee High School after a shooting at the school in Winder, Georgia.Credit: AP

King said he didn’t believe the shooting was real until he heard an officer yelling at someone to put down their gun. King said when his class was led out, he saw officers shielding what appeared to be an injured student.

Ashley Enoh was at home on Wednesday morning when she got a text from her brother, a senior at the school. “Just so you know, I love you,” he texted her.

When she asked in the family group chat what was going on, he said there was a shooter at the school. Enoh’s younger sister, a junior at the school, said she had heard about the shooter and that everything was on lockdown.

Despite the spate of shootings, little has been done to reform gun laws beyond the bipartisan bill President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, which merely tweaked around the edges.

Students and parents walk off campus at Apalachee High School.Credit: AP

The bill expanded background checks and prevented people convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun, but it did not go so far as to ban the assault weapons often used in mass shootings.

At her rally in New Hampshire, Harris veered off script briefly to once again call for Congress to act.

“Our kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, and some part of their big beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of their classroom,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Apalachee High School has about 1900 students, according to official Georgia education records.

It became Barrow County’s second-largest public high school when it opened in 2000, according to the Barrow County School System.

It’s named after the Apalachee River on the southern edge of Barrow County.

The shooting had reverberations in Atlanta, where patrols of schools in that city were beefed up, authorities said.

More patrols of Atlanta schools would be done “for the rest of the day out of an abundance of caution,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said.

With AP

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