Live Updates: Police Interviewed Suspect About Shooting Threats in 2023
The 14-year-old student accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was questioned about online threats, which he denied having made, the F.B.I. said.
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Shooting at Georgia High School Leaves Four Dead
The police responded to a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. At least nine others were injured.
“Hurry up now. Come on, let’s go.” “What the —” “We got a whole school to get evacuated, people. Come on, now. Come on. Far left. Far left. Let’s move with purpose. Come on.” “Yeah, really sad.” “It took us a while before we realized that she wasn’t one of the victims. I mean, that’s what, a good 45 minutes?” “Hour.” “An hour before we got word that she was OK. It was very terrifying. It’s the least thing you’d expect to happen.” “I don’t know how to explain the feelings. I mean, the fear — I have two children that go to Haymon-Morris, which is, borders this school. And so first thing was immediately calling the schools. Then the text messages and stuff started coming through from the schools. Terror — absolute terror.”
"A 14-year-old student opened fire at his Georgia high school on Wednesday, killing two students and two teachers before surrendering to school resource officers, according to the authorities, who said the suspect would be charged with murder.
Students, barely a month into the new school year at Apalachee High in Winder, Ga., described their terror as a lockdown that they initially thought was a drill turned out to be anything but. They said they heard gunfire and barricaded themselves in classrooms, then later fled to the football field to reunite with anxious parents.
Bryan Garcia heard what sounded like gunfire — boom, boom, boom, he said — coming from outside his math class at Apalachee High School. A lockdown alert flashed on a screen inside the room.
Following protocol, the students and teacher ran to the back of the class and huddled in the corner furthest from the door.
The suspect had been on the radar of law enforcement officials more than a year ago in connection with threats of a school shooting posted online, the F.B.I. said. He and his father were interviewed by local law enforcement officials; he denied making the threats, but the authorities alerted local schools.
In an interview on CNN, Lyela Sayarath, a junior at Apalachee High School who said she sat next to the shooter, described him as a “quiet kid” who recently transferred into the school and often skipped class. “He never really spoke,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you what his voice sounded like, or really even describe his face to you. He was just there.”
Anetra Pattman, 43, was teaching social sciences at the alternative school in Barrow County, Ga., when she received a text on Wednesday at 10:24 a.m.
It was from her 14-year-old daughter, Macey Wright, at Apalachee High. It said, “Mom, I heard gunshots. I’m scared. Please come get me.”
The shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday took place in a rural, unincorporated area between the cities of Atlanta and Athens in Georgia.
The school — where a 14-year-old student fatally shot four people and injured nine others, according to the authorities — is on the edge of Winder, which is home to about 20,000 people. The city is roughly 50 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta and about 25 miles west of Athens.
Alessandro Marazzi SassoonRichard Fausset and Rick Rojas
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Richard Fausset reported from Winder, Ga., and Rick Rojas from Atlanta.
The lockdown alert flashed on a screen in Stephen Kreyenbuhl’s classroom at Apalachee High School as the gunfire started.
Mr. Kreyenbuhl, a world history teacher, said he heard at least 10 shots on Wednesday morning, as the deadliest episode of school violence in Georgia history unfolded around the corner from his room.
The shooting at a high school in Winder, Ga., in which a gunman killed two teachers and two students, and wounded nine more people was the third mass shooting in the United States this year. It is also the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history.
The most recent mass shooting happened in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. Four people were killed in each of the two earlier attacks.
There have been about 70 shootings at K-12 schools in Georgia between 1970 and June 2022, according to data compiled by the Center for Homeland Defense and Security. But none were as deadly as Wednesday’s attack.
The data is expansive and includes instances where a gun is brandished or fired on school property, or a bullet strikes a school, regardless of the number of victims or the time that the shooting takes place.
Schools in Barrow County, Ga., will be closed for the rest of the week, said Dallas LeDuff, the superintendent of the county’s school system.
The suspect surrendered when he was confronted by law enforcement, Sheriff Smith said. “He gave up and got on the ground,” the sheriff said, and was then arrested.
In emotional remarks, Sheriff Jud Smith of Barrow County said he “never imagined” he would be in a situation like this one, which he described as “pure evil.” “My heart hurts for these kids,” he said at a news conference.
The suspect, who is in custody, will be charged with murder as an adult, said Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Reporting from Winder, Ga.
Stephen Kreyenbuhl, a world history teacher, said he heard at least 10 shots ring out nearby at about the same time that a lockdown alert flashed on a screen in his classroom at the high school. Kreyenbuhl, 26, said teachers and employees all have a key card that can initiate a lockdown if they spot a potential threat.
The authorities identified the shooter as a 14-year-old student at the school. They said the deceased included two students and two teachers.
Former President Donald J. Trump offered his condolences on social media. “Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, Ga.,” he wrote on social media. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia expressed his sadness over the shooting and offered his prayers to the families of victims and the community. “But we can’t pray only with our lips,” Warnock, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We must pray by taking action.”
Layne Saliba, a spokesman for the Northeast Georgia Health System, said the system’s campuses had received eight patients from Apalachee, three gunshot victims and five other patients suffering from anxiety-related symptoms.
Greg Mann, a parent at Apalachee High School, told 11 Alive, the NBC affiliate in Atlanta, that many students, who fled to the football field, had left their phones and keys inside the school and were still trying to get in touch with their families. Mann said he was at the school helping to connect them. “Nobody’s seen this coming,” he said. “You don’t really know what to do.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, called the Georgia school shooting “outrageous.” “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.”
TRANSCRIPT
So before I begin, I do want to say a few words about this tragic shooting that took place this morning in Winder, Ga. We’re still gathering information about what happened, but we know that there were multiple fatalities and injuries. And our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families, of course. And we are grateful to the first responders and the law enforcement that were on the scene. But this is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies. And 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. It’s senseless. It is — we got to stop it. And we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.
The shooting in Georgia on Wednesday was the deadliest at a school this year, based on data from both the Gun Violence Archive and the Violence Project that was reviewed by The New York Times. It is also the deadliest school shooting in state history, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
Traffic was snarled around the school as parents scrambled to reunite with their children. Shelbey Diamond-Alexander, the chair of the Barrow County Democratic Party, said she was handing out bottles of water to some parents who left their cars to walk the final mile and a half to the school. “It’s a mess out here,” she said. “People are just trying to get their children. It’s devastating for our community.”
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Rick Rojas
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon reported from Winder, Ga., and Rick Rojas from Atlanta.
Students at Apalachee High School had gone through drills to prepare them for how to respond to a shooting on campus. On Wednesday morning, when a lockdown warning flashed in his Spanish classroom, Jose Inciarte assumed that school officials were conducting a test.
“But then we heard keys and running and screaming,” he recalled a few hours later as he left campus.
Because law enforcement officials control crime scenes, we initially rely on the information they provide. We are working aggressively to verify it through interviews with witnesses and victims, and we will report any discrepancies between what officials are saying and what we find. Here’s how we report on mass shootings.
A 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School told Atlanta News First, a local news outlet, that he was sitting by the door in his classroom when “something told me to look to my left.” That’s when he saw the shooter “with a big gun” out of the corner of his eye, he said. The student said he ran to the back of the classroom and hid. He estimated the shooter, who he identified as a man, shot about 10 times, making his ears ring.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed that four people had died, but dispelled rumors that the suspect had been “neutralized,” adding that reports of additional shootings at nearby schools were false.
In a statement mourning the victims of the shooting, President Biden called on Republicans to work with Democrats to pass new gun control legislation. “What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” the president said"
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