Colt Gray, 14, would face a murder charge after four people were killed and nine injured in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Barrow County.
The boy was arrested by two officers on campus, a US official reported. Gray will be tried as an adult. Local sheriff Jud Smith called the attack “pure evil.”
Within minutes law enforcement was on scene, as well as two school resource officers assigned to the school who immediately encountered the subject. The subject immediately surrendered. He gave up, got on the ground. And the officers took him into custody.
It turned out that the FBI questioned Gray last year after receiving anonymous reports of online threats of a school shooting, but agents did not arrest him at the time. According to the FBI, investigators visited the suspect in May 2023 and questioned him and his father about the online threats, which included pictures of guns.
The father stated that he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. At the time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels.
One of those killed on Wednesday was 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn. Family members posted his picture on social media after they could not find him. Teacher and coach David Phenix was wounded after being shot in the leg and hip, according to reports by his family on social media.
Georgia State Governor Brian Kemp said he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms” and that he was directing “all available state resources” to help. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called the shooting “a senseless tragedy.”
It’s just outrageous that every day in our country (…) that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether their child will come home alive. It doesn’t have to be this way.
