A 14-year-old student has been named as the perpetrator of the attack with an assault rifle that claimed the lives of two of his classmates and two teachers at his high school in the southwestern United States on Wednesday.
This is the first massacre of the new school year in the country.
The police clarified that the teenager was arrested.
“The perpetrator has been arrested,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia State Bureau of Investigation, where the crime took place. “This is a 14-year-old student who attended this high school,” he explained.
Authorities have released his name, it’s Colt Gray.
In fact, the perpetrator was on the FBI’s radar from 2023 as part of an investigation into online threats to attack a school at the time.
The perpetrator will be tried as an adult
The teenager will face “murder charges” and “will be tried as an adult,” the official added during a news conference outside Apalachi High School in the town of Winder, about 70 kilometers northeast of Atlanta.
According to Principal Hoshi, the victims were two students and two teachers. Nine other people have suffered injuries of “various” degrees of severity, he added.
As announced by the head of the team in charge of the case, the four dead from the 14-year-old’s gunfire are:
- 14-year-old Mason Schermehorn
- 14-year-old Christian Angulo
- Professor Richard Aspinwall
- Professor Christina Irimai
Law enforcement intervened at the educational facility after receiving phone calls at around 10.20am (local time) yesterday.
Assault rifle attack
When he was confronted by a high school security officer, the young man “realized immediately that if he didn’t surrender” he would be shot dead, said Judd Smith, the local sheriff. “He fell to the ground and the police arrested him,” he added.
He already gave an initial statement, but “we don’t know” if the teenager had any specific goals “at this time,” he noted.
The massacre adds to the endless series of similar tragedies that have been recorded for decades in educational institutions in the US, a phenomenon that does not exist in any other country on the planet.
The teenager carried out the attack with an “AR-type” assault rifle, according to authorities.
People leave flowers outside the school.
The messages of Biden, Harris and Trump
“We cannot allow this to become the norm,” President Joe Biden, who has been calling for years—in vain—for tighter restrictions on access to guns, said in a statement.
“We must end this epidemic of gun violence in our country, once and for all,” said Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “There is no reason to put up with her,” she added during a campaign speech in the key state of Pennsylvania.
Her opponent, the Republican former president Donald Trump, chose for his part to stand by the act of the perpetrator, whom he described as a “sick and deranged monster”.
Georgia, where the massacre took place, is among the states that may decide the election result in November.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a student texted his mother at 10:23 a.m.: “I think we have a rifle.” She replied “I love you” a few minutes later.
“My teacher opened the (classroom) door to see what was going on. Another teacher came running to tell him to close the door because someone was shooting,” said 17-year-old student Sergio Caldera, according to ABC News. The teacher locked the door and he and his students gathered in a corner of the classroom, from where they could hear screams.
The high school, in a quiet suburb of metropolitan Atlanta, surrounded by grass and vegetation, was quickly cordoned off by a large police force.
Some injured people were treated at the scene by ambulance crews, according to Fox 5 Atlanta. Students were rushed out of the school, gathered on a football field, as helicopter footage broadcast by the media captured.
The US is the only country in the world that is constantly in the mourning of school killings, a scourge fueled by the proliferation of guns — there are more in circulation than residents.
In May 2022, 19 children and two female teachers were victims of a gruesome massacre at their school in Uvalde, Texas, by an eighteen-year-old who had purchased an assault rifle legally.
Now the victim toll has to be heavy, or the circumstances special, for incidents of this nature to attract national media attention.
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