Suspect in deadly Georgia high school shooting denied making online threats last year

WINDER, Ga. (AP) — The teen charged with opening fire at a Georgia high school denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when police interviewed him last year about a menacing post on the social media site Discord, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.

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Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said.

The 14-year-old suspect has been charged as an adult in the shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School outside Atlanta that killed four people and wounded nine. He is accused of using an assault-style rifle to kill two students and two teachers in the hallway outside his algebra classroom.

The same teenager was interviewed in May 2023 by a sheriff’s investigator from neighboring Jackson County who received a tip from the FBI that the boy, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to the Jackson County sheriff’s report obtained by The Associated Press.

The FBI’s tip pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address linked to the Georgia teen, the report said. But the boy told a sheriff’s investigator “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner.”

The investigator wrote that no arrests were made because of “inconsistent information” on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a digital evidence trail indicating it had been accessed in different Georgia cities as well as Buffalo, New York.

The attack Thursday was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active-shooter drills. But there has been little change to national gun laws.

Classes were canceled Thursday at the Georgia high school, though some people came to leave flowers around the flagpole and kneel in the grass with heads bowed.

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Vigil WINDER, GEORGIA - SEPTEMBER 4: People gather as students, faculty and community members gather for a vigil after a shooting at Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024 in Winder, Georgia. Four fatalities and multiple injuries have been reported, and a 14-year-old suspect is in custody according to authorities. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images) (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

“I’m upset, I’m crying constantly,” said Linda Carter, who was shaken by the rampage even though she has no children who attend the school. “These kids shouldn’t have lost their lives. These parents, these adults, these teachers should not have lost their lives yesterday.”

When the suspect slipped out of class Wednesday, Lyela Sayarath figured her quiet classmate who recently transferred was skipping school again. But he returned later and wanted back into the room. Some students went to open the locked door but instead backed away.

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

The teen then turned the gun on people in a hallway, authorities said.

He has been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, according to Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.

The teen was to be taken Thursday to a regional youth detention facility.

When the teen was not allowed back into his classroom, Sayarath said she heard a barrage of 10 to 15 gunshots. The math students fell to the floor and crawled in search of a safe corner to hide.

Two school resource officers confronted the shooter within minutes after the gunshots were reported, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered.

At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder — were taken to hospitals. All were expected to survive, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said. Authorities were still looking into how the teen obtained the gun and got it into the school with about 1,900 students in a rapidly developing area on the edge of metro Atlanta’s ever-expanding sprawl.

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Shooting At Apalachee High School In Winder, Georgia Leaves 4 Dead WINDER, GEORGIA - SEPTEMBER 4: A law enforcement officer holds a roll of caution tape after a shooting at Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024 in Winder, Georgia. Multiple fatalities and injuries have been reported and a suspect is in custody according to authorities.(Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images) (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

“All the students that had to watch their teachers and their fellow classmates die, the ones that had to walk out of the school limping, that looked traumatized,” Sayarath said.

Kassidy Reed joined a steady stream of classmates seeking counseling Thursday at the school system offices. The 17-year-old senior said she struggled to sleep Wednesday night in the aftermath of the shootings.

“The first thing you wake up and think about is like, somebody lost the coach, somebody lost their dad, somebody lost their best friend,” Reed said.

Reed was taking a test Wednesday morning with a few others in a hallway when she heard gunshots just around a corner. A teacher across the hall opened a door so they could scramble inside a chemistry lab. Reed ducked under a table next to a classmate, whose cross necklace they both gripped as they prayed.

They were close enough to hear police order someone onto the ground, followed by what sounded a person being handcuffed. When officers escorted the lab students to safety, Reed said, she saw blood in the hallway and what looked like a disassembled firearm lying next to a body.

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

Prior cases have emerged in which someone who was once on the FBI’s radar but was not arrested went on to commit violence.

A month before Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at the Parkland, Florida, high school in 2018, the bureau received a warning that he had been talking about committing a mass shooting. The FBI also investigated a tip about the person later convicted in a deadly 2022 shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado.

The pattern underscores the challenges law enforcement faces in trying to determine when concerning behavior crosses into a crime. Investigators sift through tens of thousands of tips every year to try to determine which could yield a viable threat. Cases such as the Georgia school shooting prompt fresh questions about whether more intensive investigative work might have averted the violence.

The sheriff’s report says its investigator spoke to the boy and his father on May 21, 2023. The father said he had hunting guns in the house, but his son did not have unsupervised access to them.

The teenager told the investigator that he previously used a Discord account but had stopped using the platform “because too many people kept hacking his account.”

A phone number associated with the account was linked to a different person in another Georgia city, the report said. The account’s profile name, written in Russian, translated to Lanza. The investigator noted that Adam Lanza was the perpetrator of the 2012 shootings that killed 20 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The sheriff’s office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the teen. But the investigator concluded he “could not substantiate the tip I received from the FBI to take further action.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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