By Jeff Amy
Associated Press
WINDER, Ga. — 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.
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.
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 suburbanizing area on the edge of metro Atlanta’s ever-expanding sprawl.
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.