Teen charged with killing 4 people at Georgia high school was interviewed about online threats

WINDER: Georgia police interviewed a 13-year-old boy more than a year ago while looking into online posts threatening a school shooting, but investigators didn't have enough evidence for 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 with using an assault-style rifle to kill two Apalachee High School students and two teachers in the hallway outside his algebra classroom, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference.

It was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the US in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills in classrooms. But there has been little change to national gun laws.

When the teen slipped out of class Wednesday, Lyela Sayarath figured her quiet fellow student who recently transferred was skipping school again. But he returned later and wanted back into the room. Some students went to open the locked door but instead backed away.

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

The teen then turned the gun on people in a hallway.

He has been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Hosey said. The teen, now 14, was to be taken to a regional youth detention facility on Thursday.

When the teen wasn't allowed back into his classroom, Sayarath said she heard a barrage of gunshots.

“It was about 10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back,” she said.

The math students fell to the floor and crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.

Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes of a report that shots had been fired, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.

At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. Authorities were still looking into how the teen obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school with about 1,900 students in a rapidly suburbanising area on the edge of metro Atlanta's ever-expanding sprawl.

“All the students that had to watch their teachers and their fellow classmates die, the ones that had to walk out of the school limping, that looked traumatised,” Sayarath said.

It was the 30th mass killing in the US 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 those killings, 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.

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 to the case to the sheriff's department in Jackson County, which is 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.

The sheriff's office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the teen, but there was no probable cause for arrest or additional action, the FBI said.

Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children's Services also had previous contact with the teen and will investigate whether that has any connection with the shooting. Local news outlets reported that the teen's family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, was searched on Wednesday.

On Wednesday evening, hundreds gathered in Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder for a vigil. Volunteers handed out candles. 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 in band practice when the lockdown order was issued. He said it felt like a regular drill as students lined up to hide in the band closet.

“Once we heard banging at the door and the SWAT (team) came to take us out, that's when I knew that it was serious,” he said. “I just started shaking and crying.”

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