Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student, opened fire at a Winder, Ga., high school and killed two students and two teachers on Wednesday, sending students scrambling for shelter in classrooms and to the football stadium as officers swarmed the campus and parents raced to see if their children were safe. Killed were two other 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and instructors Richard Aspenwall and Christina Irimie. Eight students and one teacher were taken to hospitals with injuries, the Associated Press reports. Two school resource officers encountered Gray minutes after a report of shots. Gray, a student at the school, immediately surrendered and was taken into custody. He is charged as an adult with murder. The weapon was an assault-style rifle.
Gray had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting. The FBI referred the case to the sheriff’s department in Jackson County, which is adjacent to the school's 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. Gray denied making online threats. The sheriff’s office alerted local schools to monitor him, but there was no probable cause for arrest, the FBI said. The state Division of Family and Children’s Services had previous contact with Gray and will investigate whether that had any connection with the shooting. Authorities were still looking into how he obtained the gun and got it into the school in a rapidly expanding suburb on the edge of metro Atlanta’s sprawl.
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