US school massacre suspect questioned about online threats last year

The 14-year-old opened fire at his high school outside Atlanta, killing four people and injuring nine.

The teenager was charged as an adult in the deaths of 14-year-old Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, as well as their teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a press conference.

At least nine other people – eight students and a teacher at the school in Winder, about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta – were taken to hospital with injuries.

Everyone is expected to survive, said Jud Smith, sheriff of Barrow County.

The teenager, now 14 years old, is due to be taken to a regional youth detention center on Thursday.

Armed with an assault rifle, the teenager pointed the weapon at students in a school hallway when classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.

The teenager had previously skipped second algebra class, and Miss Sayarath believed that the quiet student, who had recently been transferred, was skipping school again.

But he came back later and wanted to go back to the classroom.

Some students tried to open the locked door, but instead backed away.

“I suspect they saw something but for some reason didn’t open the door,” said Miss Sayarath.

As she looked through a window in the door, she saw the student turn around and heard a volley of gunshots.

“There were about 10 or 15 at a time, back to back,” she said.

The students crouched on the floor and crawled around sporadically, looking for a safe corner in which to hide.

Two school security officers encountered the shooter within minutes of receiving a report of the shots fired, Hosey said.

The teenager immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.

The teenager was questioned after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to carry out an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement.

The sheriff’s office interviewed the then 13-year-old and his father, who said there were hunting rifles in the house, but the teenager did not have unsupervised access to them.

The teenager also denied making any threats online.

The sheriff’s office advised local schools that the teenager needed to be monitored, but there was no probable cause for an arrest or further action, the FBI said.

Local news outlets reported that police searched the teenager’s family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school on Wednesday.

“All the students who had to watch their teachers and classmates die, those who had to leave school limping, looked traumatised,” said Miss Sayarath.

“That’s the consequence of not taking control.”

Authorities were still investigating how the teenager obtained the gun used in the shooting and brought it into the school, which has about 1,900 students.

It was the latest of dozens of school shootings in the United States in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas.

The classroom killings have sparked heated debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up with classroom shooting drills.

But they have done little to advance national gun laws.