The Shooting At Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, Was Induced by a 14-Year-old Student
The shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., is the most violent episode of school violence in Georgia history and killed two teachers and two students. At least nine people were injured.
The dead students were identified by the authorities as a pair of 14-year-olds. The educators who were killed were identified as Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie. The names were not confirmed by the authorities.
Chris Hosey is director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and he says those that are dead are heroes. Those that are in the hospital right now are heroes.
Mason Schermerhorn was described by friends of his family as a lighthearted teenager who liked spending time with his family, reading, telling jokes, playing video games and visiting Walt Disney World. He had recently started at the school.
“He really enjoyed life,” said Doug Kilburn, 40, a friend who has known Schermerhorn’s mother for a decade. “He always had an upbeat attitude about everything.”
When Mr. Briscoe learned about the shooting at the high school in the afternoon, he called Schermerhorn’s mother to ask if everything was OK. She told him: “Mason’s gone.”
The gunman — who the authorities identified as a 14-year-old student at the school — will be charged with murder, officials said. Students were barricaded in classrooms and heard gunfire.
David Phenix, a math special education teacher and the school’s golf coach, was injured during the shooting. Katie Phenix, his daughter, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he was shot in the foot and hip, shattering his hip bone.
The Alabama High School Campus in Winder, GA, is “very, very fluid,” a spokeswoman told the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
The online calendar shows that the academic year at Apalachee began on August 1. The school campus is located on the outskirts of Winder, Ga., near a rural highway that runs between Athens and Atlanta. This is the school’s 25th year, according to a recent message to parents.
All available state resources have been directed by the governor to respond to the incident atApalachee High School and I encourage Georgians to pray for the safety of the students in our classrooms, both here and in Barrow County.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said its agents were “on site assisting local, state, & federal law enforcement” who are investigating the violence.
The sheriff said authorities will provide an update at 4 p.m. local time. But he also predicted, “This is gonna take multiple days for us to get answers as to what happened and why this happened.”
At least two other casualties were reported by the media in Georgia, but another local hospital didn’t say if it had any patients from the school. NPR spoke to law enforcement agencies for more information.
“We’re not releasing any information as far as injuries, but we have multiple injuries,” Smith said, calling the process so far “a very, very fluid investigation.”
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith spoke with reporters outside the school Wednesday afternoon. “Obviously what you see behind us is an evil thing today,” Smith said. “At about 9:30 this morning, we received the first call that there was an active shooter” on the campus, he added.