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There are so many questions that need answering after the school shooting that killed four at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
What we know so far is that a 14 year old student at Apalachee High School opened fire during the school day. We also are learning that the casualty numbers could have been much, much worse. There were three saving graces, two of which were locking doors, and a student who refused to let the shooter into the classroom.
Junior Lyela Sayarath told CNN suspected gunman Colt Gray, who she sat next to in the math classroom, left at the start of the period only to return near the end of it.
Sayarath reportedly said someone over the loudspeaker told her teacher to check her email and moments later Gray, 14, wanted to get back inside the class.
Because the doors automatically lock when shut, someone from inside the classroom would need to let him in.
“They almost let him in, but I’m pretty sure she saw that he had a gun and so she backed away,” Sayarath said.
“And then he turned away and that’s when you hear like the first round of fire.”
The alleged gunman had moved onto another classroom, where he opened fire, she said.
The other saving grace? The school resource officer who moved instantly to intercept the shooter – and saved lives by doing so.
The suspected gunman — identified as Colt Gray, a student at the school – surrendered immediately after a school resource officer rushed in and confronted him — just minutes after the first shots were fired around 10:20 a.m., Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.
Gray was unharmed, and will be charged with murder as an adult, Horsey added.
Georgia Sheriff describes the scene where an armed school resource officer confronted and took the shooter into custody. pic.twitter.com/mg1ayOfrIR
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 4, 2024
Still, the awful, horrible fact is that four people are dead – two teachers, and two students. All the victims have been identified, and the entire community is mourning them.
Teens Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed along with math teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, when alleged gunman Colt Gray, 14, opened fire inside Apalachee High School around 10:30 a.m., authorities said during an evening press conference.
Aspinwall was also an assistant coach of the Winder-based school’s football team and served as its defensive coordinator, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Eight students and one teacher, identified earlier as David Phenix, were also injured in the massacre.
The nine wounded are expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
One of the teenagers, Mason Schermerhorn, was identified as autistic, and the teacher David Phenix, who was shot, was identified as a special education teacher. As the mother of two autistic kids, my heart broke for Schermerhorn’s family.
Mason Schermerhorn’s desperate relatives had circulated his photo on social media after they couldn’t reach the teen after the shooting, according to WSBTV.
“If he is escalated, PLEASE use a calm voice with him,” family members posted online.
“Let him know his mom is looking for him for reassurance.”
Schermerhorn’s mother later told the outlet that her son was among the dead at Apalachee High School.
The biggest question that everyone is asking, of course, is WHY. That is something that we don’t know yet. The alleged shooter, though, is still alive and in custody. Which means there will be charges, court proceedings, and likely a trial (barring a plea deal). This kid is 14 years old. He’s alleged to have killed peers and teachers. His own life, as he knew it, is over. The odds that he ever sees another day of freedom is nearly zero. Which leads us to the next question – HOW.
How did a 14 year old commit a mass shooting? Well, that is where the problems begin. It turns out that this student had been interviewed by the FBI previously for… wait for it… threatening to carry out a school shooting.
Wow
FBI admits that they received tips last year about the kid who shot up the school in Georgia today pic.twitter.com/dd7omrsaJS
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 5, 2024
The full statement reads:
FBI Atlanta responded earlier today to Apalachee High School following reports of an active shooter. Throughout the day FBI personnel have been coordinating with and supporting local and state law enforcement. The FBI will dedicate all available resources, as requested, to seek justice and bring closure for the victims and their families.
In May 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time. The online threats contained photographs of guns. Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for action.
The Jackson County Sheriffs’ Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father. The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.
At that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.
Now, the Georgia authorities and federal officials knew that this kid had made threats over a YEAR ago, but couldn’t make a case on the threats? All they could do was “alert the local schools” and tell them to watch the kid? Something feels off about this situation, and as we know, law enforcement really doesn’t like admitting when their screw-ups get people killed.
Obviously, we should be able to learn HOW the now-14 year old got access to a firearm. Reports are that the shooter used an “AR-style weapon,” and that his family “had contact with children’s services in the area.” What does that mean? We don’t know yet. However, I think it is safe to say that the father’s “hunting guns” were not secured well enough to prevent “unsupervised access.” Which is why comments like Congressman Ro Khanna’s are even more excruciatingly stupid than usual.
Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna floats the idea of banning "assault weapons" for people under the age of 25.
"Let's look at common sense!" pic.twitter.com/0ZLnBx0l3s
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 4, 2024
Could the congressman explain how “banning assault weapons” for anyone under 25 years old would have stopped the Georgia school shooting? No one legally sold a 14 year old an AR-15. I’m sure his father is much older than 25 years old. No child of that age is legally allowed to possess a weapon. If he stole the firearm out of his home, how would a magical law preventing ownership until age 25 stop him from committing theft? Also, let’s not ask Khanna how he plans on recruiting and staffing the armed services if no one under 25 should have “access” to weapons. Now, I will be fair to Khanna – he was spouting off about this before the shooter was identified, so he made an assumption about the shooter’s age being a lot closer to legal adulthood. But again, this just highlights how often politicians run their mouths before knowing all the facts at hand. Even Joe Biden’s staff released a statement about how bad guns are before details were known.
What we have here is a seriously disturbed 14 year old with a history of making threats, and even when the FBI showed up at his home over a year ago, his parents didn’t take the situation seriously enough to lock down access to firearms. People get so focused on the tool – which was illegal for him to have in the first place – that we don’t look at the person holding it. With the admission that children’s services had also been “in contact” with this family, I think we are going to learn that this kid was throwing up red flags – beyond the threats that law enforcement in Georgia previously investigated – that parents, or school, or mental health professionals, or law enforcement did not take seriously. No one wants to think that a kid’s mental state is so irretrievably broken at age 13 or 14 that they are willing to commit murder. But it has happened before. As we covered previously, when talking about the Covenant school shooter, there are failures in the mental health treatment system for children. This alleged shooter could be the next example of what happens when others are not protected from a known threat.
Apalachee High School, the families of the victims, and the community of Winder, Georgia, deserve some answers. Will they get some from the justice system as this case goes through the courts? I hope so. The answers will not bring back the four lives that were lost yesterday – but the answers might help prevent the next shooting.
Featured image via kat wilcox on Pexels, cropped, free for use under Pexels license
Edward Lunny says: Yes, sure. The idiot politicians always and immediately want to punish and penalize all of those whom were not at all involved in the crime. Bugger off you ignorant idiots. This kid was known to be autistic, the police had spoken to he and his parents. The weapon wasn’t purchased or own by him, but by his father. The father,as reported, stated that his son did not have unsupervised access to the weapon. Well then, how in the hell did he get access to it ? How was he able to bring it to school unnoticed ? People involved need to answer these questions, with great detail. The parents need to answer these questions in great detail. Idiots trying to impose the kindergarten policy to those uninvolved need a good swift kick in the ass. Figuratively if not literally.
GWB says: a school resource officer rushed in and confronted him
And they entirely leave out the important part: the SRO was armed. It’s probably assumed by most people, but it’s an important point. These folks never go somewhere and attack armed people, it’s always the defenseless. And they IMMEDIATELY surrender or go for suicide-by-cop when confronted with someone who can actually return harm to them. THIS is why “gun-free school zones” are so evil – they disarm those who would be protectors and would stop the bad guy while not doing a whole lot to stop that determined bad guy.
[shooter] was unharmed
And, note that he evidently didn’t fire a shot to subdue him. Merely the threat of harm stopped him in his tracks. (There might be a lot more to this, but in this case just the presence of the armed responder sopped things.)
and likely a trial (barring a plea deal)
And you know that some number of lazy prosecutors will go for the plea deal. Might even have it offered to them by defense counsel. Hey, why go to the trouble of a trial, when he’ll cop to everything, but you take the death penalty and life without parole off the table. A just DA would say, “Nope. Poor boy’s gonna hang.”
Now, the Georgia authorities and federal officials knew that this kid had made threats over a YEAR ago, but couldn’t make a case on the threats?
A couple of things to be careful of here. First, the FBI statement does not say the shooter was the kid they interviewed, though it seems a bit odd to say anything if it wasn’t him. He also denied making the threats. Nowhere does the FBI statement say they had any proof this kid had made the threats. There’s a lot of hedging going on with that statement, and I’m not positive it’s solely out of self-protection (though it might be).
IF they had that evidence, he should have at least been charged with making threats and gone on the list.
But, this sure does have some similarities to Parkland.
the shooter used an “AR-style weapon,”
Yes, the one photo in the NY Post article is clearly an AR of some sort.
banning “assault weapons” for people under the age of 25
Ah yes, the knee-jerk reaction of taking away law-abiding people’s rights because of an only hazily tangential experience with a criminal or madman. (And, of course, the dad is over 25, so it wouldn’t even have swept up this kid. Stupid tyrant.)
he made an assumption
Actually, I don’t think he did. He just didn’t care. He had to mouth his stupidity to get his Progressive pat on the head for the day. Tyrants gonna tyrant.
with a history of making threats
this kid was throwing up red flags
Yep. Read a story interviewing the girl who was sitting next to him before he went to get the rifle. She was saying he was “quiet” (in the creepy sort of way) and was often not at school, or would just leave school abruptly during the day (as he did that morning). Those are major red flags and the school should have stopped him entirely due to those behaviors (the leaving school and truancy).
there are failures in the mental health treatment system for children
More importantly, IMO, is that there are failures in the parenting of these kids. And I’m not blaming the parents, necessarily. I’m saying that our entire society is broken because of the Progressive warping of child-rearing today. Notice there’s no mention of a mother? Losing a mother can have profound impacts on a boy, and a father might have a hard time handling him. There’s no real support system (except the psychological industry) for a great many of these parents nowadays. And they’re often separated from generations past who might have been able to lend some real support and wisdom. (We’ve got 3 generations, now, whose parents have been told, “They’re so different. You’ll never be able to understand them,” and “Things are so different for them, and you can’t impose your way of doing things on them, and they know so much more than you.”)
My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones or had loved ones injured. I really hope they will see clearly how we have to deal with “problem” children and not merely the tools they use for their destruction.
GWB says: I misquoted the Kingston Trio. It’s “Poor boy you’re bound to die” from Tom Dooley.
(Which is a bit of progressive folk song twaddle, but it’s got a good tune to it, and the line works for this.)
Mad Celt says: Barrow County (40 miles south of where I live) is notoriously lenenent on crime which is causing a mass exodus from it. My county, Hall, is taking in these refugees who are bring their warped ideas of justice with them. Stand by because Monror, Covington and Monicello are soon to make the news for the same readon.
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