Fourteen-year-old Colt Gray will be charged with murder and tried as an adult after police say he killed four people and wounded nearly 30 others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia Wednesday.
The boy was already on law enforcement radar since May of last year when he and his father were interviewed by authorities after the FBI received anonymous tips from fellow gamers that the boy threatened to commit a school shooting. Gray denied it. Although his father admitted to having hunting rifles in the home, he said his son did not have unsupervised access to the weapons. No probable cause was found and no arrest was made.
Authorities identified the fatalities as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermehorn and Christian Angulo, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie.
Student Lyela Sayarath said the shooter, who rarely spoke and sometimes skipped school, left her algebra class and then tried to get back in.
“I saw students go back to open the door for him. And they backed away. I’m guessing they saw something, but for some reason, they didn’t open the door. And I could see him kind of turn to the side, like what would have been my right, and then you hear gunshots. Was about ten to fifteen of them, at once, back to back,” she said.
Students retreated to the football field where many formed a circle in the end zone praying and holding hands.
“I was scared,” said student Alexandra Romero. “I have so much fear. I’m like shaking.”
Student Joshua Maloch feared the worst. “I might not get to see my family again,” he thought. “My brother – I was scared he might not make it out.”
Terrified parents rushed to the school, many already communicating with their children. One mother texted her daughter the Lord’s Prayer. Others spoke by phone.
“I said, ‘Son, please tell me you’re joking,'” one mother recalled. “He said, ‘No Mom, I’m not joking.’ He said, ‘There’s shooting in the school and the shooter is right across the hall from me.'”
Investigators are trying to determine how the shooter obtained the AR-style rifle used in the killings, which the suspect surrendered when an armed school resource officer confronted him.
“The shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up that it would end with an O.I.S. – an officer-involved shooting,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters.
Wednesday evening a number of prayer meetings took place at various churches and other locations in the community. Winder First Baptist Church Pastor Chad Mantooth told CBN News it’s just the first step on the long road towards healing.
“We have a wonderful, wonderful community of faith here, tremendous churches that are right now beginning that process of how to help people through this and minister to people,” he said. “We live in a fallen, sinful world, and because of that, unfortunately tragedies like this are going to take place.”
Pastor Mantooth said since Winder is a tight-knit community, this tragedy affects everyone.
“We’re always wanting to drive people back to the reality that there is a God who deeply loves us, who mourns over this, but who also offers redemption and salvation and hope in the midst of such tragedy,” he said. “Life, the Bible says, is like a vapor, and we do not know how long we have, and we do not know when that life will come to an end in this physical body. But we do know that if we’ve trusted in Christ, and we have salvation that is granted to us by grace through faith in Him, then our hope is secure.”
Similarly, Sheriff Smith ended his remarks at a Wednesday afternoon news conference by saying, “Hate will not prevail in this county. I want that to be very clear and known. Love will prevail over what happened today.”
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