Authorities Received Information About Threats Made by Georgia School Shooting Suspect One Year Ago

WINDER, Ga. — More than a year ago, reports of online messages threatening to shoot up a school led Georgia police to question a 13-year-old boy, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. On Wednesday, the boy opened fire at his high school near Atlanta, killing four people and wounding nine others, authorities said.

The teen was charged as an adult in the deaths of Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, 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 from the school in Winder, about an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All are expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.

The teenager, now 14, was due to be taken to a regional youth detention centre on Thursday.

Armed with an assault rifle, the teenager turned the gun on students in a school hallway when his classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra class, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.

The teenager had left second-period algebra class early, and Sayarath figured the quiet student who had recently transferred was missing class again.

But he came back later and wanted to go back to class. Some students wanted to open the locked door but withdrew.

“I guess they saw something, but for some reason they didn't open the door,” Sayarath said.

When she looked through a window in the door, she saw the student turn around and heard a burst of gunfire.

“There were about 10 or 15 of them at a time, back to back,” she said.

The math students crouched on the ground and crawled around from time to time, looking for a safe corner to hide.

Two school protective services officers encountered the shooter minutes after a report of shots fired was made, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.

The teenager 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 limited the threats and forwarded the case to the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, which borders Barrow County.

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

The sheriff's office alerted local schools to continue monitoring the teen, but there was no probable cause to arrest the teen or take further action, the FBI said.

Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children Services also had contact with the teen and would investigate whether it was related to the shooting. Local media reported that law enforcement searched the teen's family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school, on Wednesday.

“All the students who had to watch their teachers and classmates die, the ones who had to limp out of school, who looked traumatized,” Sayarath said, “that's the consequence of not taking control.”

Authorities were still investigating how the teenager obtained the gun used in the shooting and brought it into the school with about 1,900 students in Barrow County, a booming area on the edge of Atlanta's ever-expanding urban sprawl.

It’s the latest in a string of dozens of school shootings in the United States in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Conn., Parkland, Fla., and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have sparked fierce debates over gun control and strained parents whose children are growing up accustomed to classroom shooting drills. But they have done little to advance national gun laws.

According to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University, there have been 29 mass shootings in the United States so far this year. At least 127 people have died in the killings, 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 of people gathered at Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder for a wake. 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 mourning.

Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended the vigil because he needed to feel grounded and be in a safe place.

He was rehearsing with his band when the stay-at-home order was given. He said it felt like a regular drill as students lined up to hide in the band closet.

“As soon as we heard the knocking at the door and the SWAT team came to get us, I knew it was serious,” he said. “I started shaking and crying.”

He finally calmed down once he reached the football stadium. “I was just praying that everyone I love is safe,” he said.

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