Four people were fatally shot and several others injured at a Georgia high school Wednesday morning, sending shock waves through the leafy Atlanta suburb of Winder, Georgia, and schools throughout the county into lockdown.
Nine people – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Two students and two teachers were killed, GBI Director Chris Hosey said at a news briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Suspected shooter Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student, was arrested and charged with murder Wednesday, according to the GBI. Authorities said he would be prosecuted as an adult.
Reports about an active shooter at Apalachee High School started coming in around 10:20 a.m., Hosey said, and law enforcement arrived minutes later. Once they encountered the shooter, he immediately surrendered and was taken into custody, according to Hosey.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters he was not aware of any connection between the suspected shooter and the victims.
“This is a very, very fluid investigation,” Smith said in a news conference outside the school. “What you see behind us is an evil thing.”
President Joe Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden are mourning those killed in the shooting. He demanded that Congress move to pass gun control legislation.
“What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” Biden said. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
According to a database by USA TODAY, the Associated Press and Northeastern University, Wednesday’s massacre is the 604th mass killing in the U.S. since 2006 in which four or more people are killed. The database has tracked 3,120 fatalities in mass killings across the United States in 18 years.
A USA TODAY analysis of the data found Gray is the youngest suspected school shooter behind a mass killing since at least 2006.
The massacre in Georgia is the first school mass killing this fall after the 2023-24 school year saw a dramatic rise in shootings with at least 144 instances of gun violence, according to a recent study. Everytown for Gun Safety and David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, found gun violence at schools killed 36 people and injured 87 others in the previous academic year.