The 14-year-old boy charged with killing four people and wounding at least nine others during a school shooting at a high school in Georgia has had connections to earlier threats of violence, according to officials.
Georgia police say they interviewed a 13-year-old boy more than a year ago while investigating online posts threatening a school shooting, but didn’t collect enough evidence to arrest him.
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 the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, which is adjacent to Barrow County.
Despite the sheriff’s office alerting local schools for continued monitoring of the teen, there was no probable cause for arrest or additional action, according to the FBI.
Now, officials say this is the same person being charged as an adult with using an assault-style rifle to kill two Apalachee High School students and two teachers in the hallway outside of his algebra classroom, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference.
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.
“All the students that had to watch their teachers and their fellow classmates die, the ones that had to walk out of the school limping, that looked traumatized,” Lyela Sayarath, a student at Apalachee High School who was in class when the suspect opened fire in the hallway, told AP, ”that’s the consequence of the action of not taking control.”
The four people who were killed in the shooting are students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and instructors Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, officials reported.
At least nine other people, eight students and one teacher at the school, were taken to hospitals with injuries. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said all were expected to survive.
This tragic shooting is the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. Debates about gun control persist as these fatal incidents have grown, establishing a widespread push for legislators to move toward reform on national gun laws.
