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Four killed in Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia, United States

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Monday, September 9, 2024

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On Wednesday morning, two fourteen year old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two mathematics teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, died in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School near Winder, Georgia, United States. Nine other people, eight students and one teacher, were hospitalized according to Chris Hosey, the director of Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). One of them has been transported by helicopter to Grady Memorial Hospital, Grady's director of public relations, Danielle Hackett, told CNN.

As Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said at a news conference on Wednesday night, all of the hospitalized victims are expected to survive and are "going to recover well". As some of law enforcement sources told CNN, there could be up to 30 people who were injured; video from outside the school showed several ambulances, besides a large active police presence.

According to the GBI, the suspect is a fourteen year old student, named Colt Gray. According to his classmate, he left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. local time. He returned toward the end of the Algebra class and knocked on the door. A student opened the door, saw the gun, and refused to let Colt Gray in, according to an account from another student in the class, CNN reported. Thereafter, according to the same sources, Gray started shooting in the next classroom.

According to the GBI, the sheriff's office received calls of an active shooter at the school at around 10:20 am, with law enforcement arriving at the scene "within minutes," in addition to two school resources officers who were assigned to Apalachee High. As Hosey said, the resource officers "immediately encountered the subject within just minutes of this report going out... Once they encountered the subject, the subject immediately surrendered to these officers and he was taken into custody".

As GBI's Director Hosey said in a news conference on Wednesday night, authorities still are investigating how the suspect brought into the school the "AR-platform style weapon" that was used in the shooting; an AR-15 style rifle, as a law enforcement official told CNN. According to FBI Atlanta's post on X, it is aware of the situation and "agents are on scene coordinating with and supporting local law enforcement."

The motive of Colt Gray is unknown. He is currently in custody and was charged with murder as an adult on Wednesday.

This shooting was the 45th school shooting in the USA in 2024, according to a CNN analysis, and the deadliest so far this year — one of eleven school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings.

As of 2024, Apalachee High School has about 1,900 students in grades 9–12, with 528 students in 9th grade, according to U.S. News & World Report.


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