Officials identify victims in Georgia high school shooting, say AR platform-style weapon used

Two students and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christiana Irimie, 53, were the two teachers killed in the incident, officials said at a Wednesday night news briefing. Students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, also 14, were also kille

d, officials confirmed.

Another nine victims — eight students and one teacher — were taken to hospitals with injuries following the shooting, the GBI said earlier in the day.

The suspect — 14-year-old Colt Gray, a student at Apalachee High School — was encountered by officers within minutes, and he immediately surrendered and was taken into custody, the GBI said. He will be charged with murder and he will be tried as an adult, the GBI said. Gray was set to be booked on Wednesday night, according to an official.

It’s not clear if any of the victims were targeted, authorities said.

Chris Hosey, the director of the GBI, said at Wednesday night’s briefing that an AR-platform-style weapon was used in the incident.

Emergency responders were alerted to the shooting due to teachers having a form of identification that had a type of panic button on it, a law enforcement member said at the news briefing. He added that they had only had those kinds of IDs for “about a week.”

Earlier Wednesday night, the FBI confirmed on X that the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, on an alert from the organization, interviewed Wednesday’s alleged shooting suspect in 2023.

“In May 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time,” the FBI post read. “Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for action.”

The agency added that the sheriff’s office “located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father. The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online,” the FBI said.