CNN
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The community of Winder, Georgia, is mourning the deaths of two students and two teachers killed Wednesday in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School, the deadliest of 45 school shootings so far this year. Here’s the latest:

• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: The suspected shooter is in custody and has been identified as Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference. He will be charged with murder and will be treated as an adult as he moves through the criminal justice system, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. Gray is scheduled to be booked into jail Wednesday night. Hosey said he was unsure when Colt would make his first court appearance but said it would be “in a reasonable time frame.”

• Authorities identify four dead victims: Hosey identified the four victims killed in Wednesday’s shooting as 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie. The school’s website shows the two adults were both math teachers, and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.

• Nine victims were injured: Nine victims — eight students and one teacher — were taken to hospitals with injuries, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. All of the injured are expected to recover.

• How the shooting unfolded: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. Police arrived shortly afterward, Hosey said, along with two school resource officers assigned to Apalachee High. The gunfire sent students and teachers scrambling for cover as schools across the region went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. A school resource officer confronted the shooter, who lay on the ground and was arrested, Smith told reporters.

• AR platform weapon used in shooting: The weapon used in the mass shooting was an AR-platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official previously told CNN it was an AR-15-style rifle, but did not provide information about how investigators believe the suspect obtained the weapon or other details about the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the suspect brought the weapon to school. “We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline from when he arrived at school today to the incident,” Hosey said.

• The high school had received a telephone threat: The high school had previously received a phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The call Wednesday morning warned that five schools would be shot, with Apalachee being the first. It is not known who made the call.

• Schools in the region went into lockdown: According to the sources, all schools in the Barrow County School System, including the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent to all high schools in the district as a precaution. However, there were no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.

• Government officials respond to shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has deployed all available state resources to help on the ground, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden offered federal support to state and local officials and called on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons. “We can no longer accept this as business as usual,” he said in a statement. Gen. Merrick Garland said the U.S. Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community in the wake of the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the ground and working with partners at the state, local and federal levels,” Garland said during a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools close after shooting: Schools in Barrow County will remain closed for the rest of the week as the investigation continues. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, according to the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled in Apalachee High School. Winder, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

• How it compares to previous school shootings: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 13 on college and university campuses. The shooting is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008, when CNN first started tracking school shootings. The U.S. has had at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings per day.

The suspect, a 14-year-old Apalachee student, was questioned by police last year about “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, the agencies said.

The online threats included pictures of weapons, the statement said.

“The father stated that he had hunting rifles in the house, but the suspect did not have any
“Unsupervised access to this data is not permitted,” the statement said.

The authorities added that “there was no probable cause at that time for an arrest or to take additional law enforcement action at the local, state or federal level.”

Investigators have spoken to the suspected shooter and contacted his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known whether the attacker had any connection to his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that would be part of the investigation.

One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspected shooter left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned toward the end of class, he knocked to get back in. Another student tried to open the door, but Lyela said they saw the gun and didn’t open the door. She said the shooter went into the classroom next door and opened fire.

Hosey said there is no evidence that other schools were targeted, but that investigators are pursuing “any leads of possible associates of the shooter involved in this incident.” There is also no evidence that another shooter was involved, and no evidence of a list of schools targeted.

“However, there is a lot of evidence that is being collected and evaluated,” Hosey added.

As police investigate the shooting and the motive behind it, Smith warned it could be “several days” before any answers come.

Kemp thanked the emergency workers and other officials who responded to the shooting on Wednesday.

“This is everyone’s worst nightmare and I want to offer my sincere condolences, thoughts and prayers to the families who have lost loved ones, to those who have been injured and are still fighting through this tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey called the high school’s teachers and staff “heroes” who took action to protect students.

“The heroes that we need to remember are our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They conducted themselves admirably. They were heroes in the actions that they took. The protocols at this school and this system that was activated today prevented this from becoming a much greater tragedy than what we had here today, so I want to recognize them.”

Kathrine Maldonado slept in and missed school on Wednesday, she said. When she woke up later that morning, her friend texted her saying the school was on lockdown.

Kathrine’s friend said she was fine and then started messaging group chats, where they learned that a friend had been killed and at least two others had been injured.

“When I found out, I started crying and I got angry because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.

Kathrine said her boyfriend who died in the shooting was known as a class clown and described him as a “nice person.”

Other students at Apalachee High School say they are still processing today’s tragedy, when their classmates and teachers were gunned down.

“It was pretty tough because a lot happened in a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was pretty hard to process.”

Another student, her 14-year-old daughter Macey Right, says she is worried about returning to school.

“I really don’t want to go back; I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school and worry about dying,” Right said. “I want to go to school and worry about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and what my career is going to be like.”