More than a year ago, tips about online posts threatening a school shooting led Georgia police to interview a then-13-year-old boy, but investigators did not 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 — who had not been named — has been charged as an adult in the deaths of Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, as well as instructors Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference.
Photo: AFP
At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder, about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
The teen, now 14, was to be taken to a regional youth detention facility.
Armed with a rifle, the teen turned the gun on students in a hallway at the school when classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.
The teen earlier left the second-period algebra classroom, and Sayarath figured the quiet student who recently transferred was skipping school again.
However, he returned later and wanted back in the classroom. Some students went to open the locked door, but instead backed away.
“I’m guessing they saw something, but for some reason they didn’t open the door,” Sayarath said.
When she looked at him through a widow in the door, she saw the student turn and heard gunshots.
“It was about 10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back,” she said.
The math students ducked onto the floor and sporadically crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.
Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes after a report of shots fired went out, Hosey said.
The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.
The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May last year 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.
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