#14 year old shooter in georgia

[updatenewswhisper]

Georgia high school shooting suspect ID’d as Colt Gray, 14

The shooter who allegedly killed four people and wounded nine others at a Georgia high school on Wednesday has been identified as 14-year-old 

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[sportsnewsall]

Georgia high school shooting suspect ID’d as Colt Gray, 14

The shooter who allegedly killed four people and wounded nine others at a Georgia high school on Wednesday has been identified as 14-year-old

See More...

[dollielliot]

𐙚ྀིྀ ⠀︵　info on the Apalchee highschool shooting that happened today, 9/4/24˖ ㅤ૮𐔌ྀི ´ ཀ ྀི 𐦯ྀིა⠀

The 14-year-old suspect in the fatal mass shooting at a Winder, Georgia, high school has been identified as Colt Gray, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at an afternoon news conference. The suspect is a student at Apalachee High School who will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult as he moves through the criminal justice system, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith added.

Two teachers and two students were killed, Hosey said. Nine other victims were taken to hospitals, according to the officials. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. Wednesday’s shooting is the deadliest of the 45 school shootings so far this calendar year, according to a CNN analysis. It is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008 when CNN first started tracking school shootings. Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. A school resource deputy assigned to Apalachee High confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

The witness sat next to the suspected shooter

Lyela Sayarath, 16, told CNN the alleged shooter sat next to her in an algebra class. She said he left class early, around 9:45 a.m., but didn’t take a bathroom pass. She thought he might be skipping. Toward the end of class, someone told her teacher over the loudspeaker to check their email, she said. Shortly after, Gray was outside the classroom door, which was shut, Lyela said. Another student who went to the door jumped backward when she saw he had a gun. "I guess he saw we weren’t gonna let him in,” Lyela said. “And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open, so I think he just started shooting in the classroom.” At first, she told CNN she heard a burst of gunfire – maybe 10 to 15 shots – and then they were “kind of just Students dropped to the floor and crawled to the corner, Lyela said.

“It seemed like this wasn’t something he planned too well or that he wasn’t really strong with the gun because he didn’t try and shoot our door. Once he saw he couldn’t get in our room, he just went to the next one.”

Latest developments

The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation. Schools in Barrow County will be closed for the rest of the week.

Student texted mom: ‘I’m scared’

Erin Clark was at work Wednesday morning when she got a series of text messages from her son, a senior, who was attending class at Apalachee High School.

“School shooting.”

“I’m scared,” he wrote.

“pls” “I’m not joking,”

“I’m leaving work,” Clark replied. “I love you,” her son, Ethan Haney, 17, wrote back.

“Love you too baby,” his mom texted before racing to the high school.

Clark told CNN her son heard eight or nine gunshots before he closed his classroom door and, with the help of another classmate, moved chairs and tables to block the door.

Clark told CNN she was “absolutely terrified” when she read her son’s messages. “Just kept praying he’d stay safe,” she said.

Schools in the county went into lockdown

As emergency responders came from several counties, video from outside the school showed at least five ambulances and a large law enforcement presence at the campus, and at least one medical helicopter could be seen airlifting a patient from the scene. At the football field, where authorities had students gather, people lowered their heads and formed a prayer circle in the end zone, standing on the letters for “Apalachee” as their classmates milled around the field. All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there are no reports of secondary incidents or scenes. Some of the critically injured were removed by helicopter, and additional helicopters are on standby.

Atlanta Trauma Center and other hospitals take patients

Grady Health System – a Level 1 trauma center in Atlanta, about an hour's drive from Winder – received one gunshot wound victim from the incident who was transported by helicopter, a hospital spokesperson told CNN. Earlier, a source with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital in North Georgia received two victims from the shooting. The source said one victim was an adult with a gunshot wound to the stomach and was in surgery, and another was a minor with unspecified injuries. Three gunshot victims were taken to nearby hospitals following the shooting, according to a hospital official, and five other patients reported to the hospital with symptoms related to a panic attack. Two gunshot victims were taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow with non-life-threatening injuries, Northeast Georgia Health System spokesperson Layne Saliba said. Four other patients came with symptoms related to panic attacks.

Another gunshot victim was taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Gainesville with non-life-threatening injuries, Saliba said, and an additional patient came to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Braselton with symptoms related to a panic attack.

Georgia governor sends prayers and says he can send resources

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, 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 has been briefed on the incident, the White House said, offering federal support to state and local officials.

“His administration will continue coordinating with federal, state, and local officials as we receive more information,” the White House said in a statement. Attorney General Merrick Garland similarly said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local, and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

Winder had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School.

[pariahdonna]

fast facts for the georgia high shooting:

14 year old Colt Gray is confirmed to have been the shooter, and is in police custody. he is to be charged as an adult for murder.

no connection has been found between Gray and the victims.

4 have been confirmed dead (2 students, 2 teachers), and 9 are currently hospitalized — including apalachee high school's special education mathematics teacher David Phenix, who, according to his daughter, was shot in the hip and foot. he is currently stable and has already been through surgery for his wounds.

the school year at AHS started on august 1, which makes this week just the 5th week of school for the students.

[mcspocky]

The RNC had an official watch party for the debate tonight at a GUN STORE in Georgia, not too far away from where the people were killed by a 14-year-old shooter last week.

GOP - Guns Over People

[unabombz]

rip to the people killed by a 14-year-old shooter at Apalachee High School yesterday in Georgia.

[doomsday-architect]

Let's see if I've got this straight, or crooked.....

The 14 year old Georgia school shooter is being held and will be tried as an adult.

His father has been arrested and charged with a crime. Specifics not clear.

The FBI had identified the kid as a "potential" problem a YEAR AGO!

So, here comes the question..........

Who at the FBI identified the kid as a "potential" problem.

What, specifically, was the "PROBLEM"?

Why, oh why wasn't there an INTERVENTION?

Who, other than the kid and his father will be held "accountable" for not acting to protect the public?

Certainly NOT ANYONE AT THE FBI!

Where is J. Edger Hoover when you need him?

[delicatuscii-wasbella102]

Once again, America, another mass shooting. When will this end? Your gun laws are antiquated and not right for the 21st century. 261 mass shootings across the country so far this year, That's horrific. If it was just about owning a gun, those wanting one would all have the smallest calibre and one only, but of course it's not. And, how on earth are the police allowed to identify this boy? He is a child of 14 and to charge him as an adult? Obviously i'm not excusing what he has done, but America really needs to step up, again! I've already seen people saying 'thoughts and prayers' which of course is rolled out everytime, which makes people feel better, but surely if all these prayers past and present, were answered, why hasn't it all stopped? Why keep praying? Why hasn't a god done something? It makes no sense. My heart is with the two teachers – Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie – and two students –  Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14 and their families.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 14, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 15, 2024

Shortly after 6:00 yesterday evening at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a shooter on the roof of a building about 400 feet from the stage appears to have shot eight bullets at the former president and into the crowd. Trump appeared to flinch and reach for his right ear as Secret Service agents crouched over the former president. When the agents got word the shooter was “down,” they lifted Trump to move him out. He asked to get his shoes and then to put them on.

With that apparently accomplished, Trump stood up with blood on his face, exposed to the crowd, and told the agents to wait. He raised his fist in the air in front of an American flag in what instantly became an iconic image. He appeared to yell, “Fight, fight, fight!” to the crowd before being ushered offstage.

Pennsylvania firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed. David Dutch, 57, was injured and is hospitalized in stable condition. James Copenhaver, 74, was also injured and is in stable condition. 

The FBI has identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service agent. Crooks used an AR-type semiautomatic rifle that apparently belonged to his father. Crooks was wearing a gray Demolition Ranch tee shirt advertising a YouTube channel for gun enthusiasts and people interested in explosive devices. The channel has more than 11 million followers. Crooks appears to have been a registered Republican.   

Trump said he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” So far, no doctors have briefed the public. 

In the confusion immediately after the shooting, MAGA Republicans blamed the Democrats for the violence. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who is in the running to be Trump’s vice presidential pick, posted on social media. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Representative Mike Collins of Georgia called for a Republican district attorney to “immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.” Indeed, he said, “Joe Biden sent the orders.”  

Edward Luce of the Financial Times noted, “Almost any criticism of Trump is already being spun by Maga as an incitement to assassinate him. This is an Orwellian attempt to silence what remains of the effort to stop him from regaining power.” Indeed, MAGA Republicans appear to be trying to stop discussion of their extremist plans— which are enormously unpopular— by claiming that such a discussion is polarizing. 

The idea that Democratic opposition to authoritarian plans like those outlined in Project 2025 caused violence might convince MAGA Republicans, but it will likely be a hard sell for Americans who remember things like: 

•Trump’s own suggestion in 2016 that “Second Amendment people” could solve the problem of Hillary Clinton picking judges; or his 2020 attacks on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, who became the target of a kidnapping plot; or election workers bombarded with death threats as Trump lied that the 2020 election was stolen;

•the October 2022 tweet by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mocking then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul after a home intruder hit him in the head with a hammer; or Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2022 campaign video in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda” as she took aim with a rifle; 

•in 2023, House Republicans wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress; Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) saying his wife slept with a loaded gun after he voted against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House speaker; or Republican representatives sending Christmas cards showing the whole family toting guns;

•in 2024, the Kansas Republican Party’s March fundraiser where attendees could donate to kick and punch an effigy of President Biden; or Don Jr.’s reposting an image of Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck;

•or Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who is running for the governorship and who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention starting tomorrow, saying just two weeks ago: “Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.”

Indeed, in March 2024, in Vance’s home state, Trump said: if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole…country,” and a 2022 campaign ad by Representative Collins himself showed him shooting a rifle at Nancy Pelosi’s “agenda” and at a cardboard rhinoceros he says is a “RINO,” a Republican in Name Only. 

Republicans under Trump have increasingly advocated violence as a way to gain power because they know their unpopular positions cannot lead their candidates to victory in free and fair elections. In this moment, when there is still little evidence about yesterday’s tragedy, it appears they are projecting their own behavior onto Biden and the Democrats, blaming them for advocating violence when in fact, Biden and the Democrats have tried hard to enact commonsense gun safety laws and have consistently condemned the violent language and normalizing of political violence by Republicans. 

Republicans’ embrace of violence is a hallmark of authoritarian leaders; by definition it  undermines democracy. In Nashville, Tennessee, today, neo-Nazis shouting “Hitler was right!” were involved in fights in the streets. Ending that resort to violence, which never advances society and always injures it, is key to restoring the guardrails of democracy.

Biden spoke to the nation tonight, warning that Americans need to “lower the temperature in our politics and to remember, while we may disagree, we are not enemies. We’re neighbors. We’re friends, coworkers, citizens. And, most importantly, we are fellow Americans. And we must stand together.” He condemned yesterday’s violence, noting that “[a] former president was shot” and “an American citizen killed while simply exercising his freedom to support the candidate of his choosing…. There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” 

The framers of the Constitution, he said, “created a democracy that gave reason and balance a chance to prevail over brute force. That’s the America we must be, an American democracy where arguments are made in good faith, an American democracy where the rule of law is respected, an American democracy where decency, dignity, fair play aren’t just quaint notions, but living, breathing realities.”

Biden rejected the idea that criticizing the Republicans’ extremism was polarizing. While they can “criticize my record and offer their own vision for this country,” he said, “I’ll continue to speak out strongly for our democracy, stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law, to call for action at the ballot box, no violence on our streets. That’s how democracy should work.” 

Biden paused all campaign ads and events after the shooting and told staffers to “refrain from issuing any comments on social media or in public.” Trump is fundraising off the attempt on his life, but he spent the day golfing rather than campaigning. 

The Secret Service has launched an investigation of how a shooter could get so close to Trump; Biden has ordered an independent investigation as well. Biden said he has also directed the Secret Service to review the security measures in place for the Republican National Convention, which starts tomorrow in Milwaukee.

Within hours of the shooting, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced that “THE HOUSE WILL CONDUCT A FULL INVESTIGATION OF THE TRAGIC EVENTS TODAY,” saying, “The American people deserve to know the truth.” Although the FBI investigation has barely gotten underway and Congress has no law enforcement power, Johnson promised to have officials from the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI “appear for a hearing before our committees ASAP.” 

Observers noted that it sounded like MAGA plans to have yet another investigation designed to spread a narrative, in this case, that the “Deep State” was involved in the shooting. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[darkmaga-retard]

The FBI has confirmed that the 14-year-old Georgia high school shooter has been monitored by the agency since 2023 after being flagged as a threat over online remarks.

The alleged shooter, Colt Gray, was a student at the Apalachee High School in Georgia.

The gunman opened fire at the Georgia high school on Wednesday, killing two students and two teachers and wounding nine others.

Gray was known to the FBI as early as May 2023 after the agency received “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time.”

In a joint statement, the FBI’s Atlanta field office and Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said the agency’s National Threat Operations Center was alerted to the threats posted online.

The agencies said that the threats contained images of guns.

Within 24 hours of receiving the anonymous tip, investigators determined the threats originated in Georgia.

The matter was then referred to the sheriff’s office.

In a statement, the FBI said:

[infamousbrad]

Welcome back to Newtown, USA

Holly Bailey, et al, "Georgia students and teachers killed in deadliest school shooting this year," Washington Post, 4 Sep 2024:

Police identified the suspect as ... a student who attracted the attention of federal investigators more than a year ago, when they began receiving anonymous tips about someone threatening a school shooting. The FBI referred the reports to local authorities, whose investigations led them to interview [the shooter] and his father. The father told police that he had hunting guns in the house, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them.

The Newtown shooter's mom was warned, at least months before his rampage, that he was a danger to himself and others but his mom was more afraid her son might get shot by (non-existent) looters than that he would carry out his threat to shoot her, then shoot up a school, and then kill himself, which is what he did, with a gun that she made sure he still had.

Earlier in the article, it's reported that ...

Officers arrested the lone suspect after a brief confrontation and said he would be charged with murder and tried as an adult.

I don't believe in charging 14 year olds as adults, because they don't make adult decisions, any more than I wish that the 13 and 14 year olds who tried to kill me with clubs 50 years ago had been charged as adults.

Children aren't adults. The things that children do, however awful? Are things they learned from the adults around them. Guns don't kill children. American children kill other children, with guns. Other countries have privately owned guns. Only a handful of equally sick societies have spree killers, and fewer than that have spree-killer children.

Somebody told that kid that shooting people was an appropriate thing to do when, whatever happened, whenever you feel slighted or wronged or angry or whatever. Probably the same someone who left a rapid-fire semi-automatic rifle where a 14 year old could get it. Charge the actual adult(s) with multiple counts of accessory in advance to murder.

Shutting down the pipeline that provides guns to suicidal and/or homicidal pre-teens and teenagers seems to me like the least controversial, lowest hanging fruit in the whole "gun debate." And yet, here we are.

[justbeingnamaste]

1. When a 14yo goes into a school and starts shooting people— that 14yo is mentally ill. It’s not the gun, it’s the human pulling the trigger. 2. A good guy with a gun will always be what stops a bad guy with a gun. On-site law enforcement confirms a School Resource Officer (SRO) engaged and stopped the shooter / murderer. 3. Stop me if you’ve heard this before but the school shooter today was known to the FBI. The FBI in Atlanta just revealed they've been aware of the 14-year-old Georgia school shooter, since 2023. Why didn't the FBI take any action against him? 4. My heart goes out to the victims, families, and first responders dealing with the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Rest in Peace: Mason Schermerhorn, 14, student Christian Angulo, 14, student Richard Aspinwall, teacher Christina Irimie, teacher Pray for their families and all those who are dealing with this terrible tragedy.🙏

~ Dave Brown

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

The FBI has confirmed that the 14-year-old Apalachee High School shooter, Colt Gray, a student at the Georgia school, was known to the agency as early as May 2023 after receiving “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time.”

This comes after we learned that an unidentified individual also warned the high school via phone that it would be the first of five schools targeted with violence prior to the shooting on Wednesday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intentional neglect and criminal culpability. That's the FBI. The agency needs completely disbanded and shoved headlong into the cesspool of history.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marin Cogan at Vox:

At least four people were killed, and nine were injured after a shooter opened fire at Apalachee High School in northern Georgia on Wednesday, the latest in more than 250 mass shootings that have taken place in the US in 2024. By Friday, law enforcement had charged both a 14-year-old boy and his father in connection with the shooting. The suspect, police say, used an “AR-platform-style weapon” similar to the types of guns commonly used by mass shooters. The FBI revealed that law enforcement had interviewed the suspect and his dad in 2023 over school shooting threats the boy had allegedly made on the social media platform Discord but were unable to substantiate them or take further action. Sometime after that, law enforcement sources say, the boy’s father gave him an AR-15 style rifle as a gift. The boy’s extended family has since revealed that the alleged shooter was experiencing family and mental health issues in the months leading up to the attack, and that they had tried to get him help, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the attack.

The details of the Barrow County shooting are familiar. The fact that law enforcement knew of alleged threats from the shooter over a year ago and was still unable to stop the shooting or prevent the suspect from getting a gun points to how difficult it is to prevent mass shootings. And while mass shootings make up just a small percentage of the large number of gun deaths that happen in the United States every year, they are the most attention-grabbing and obvious manifestation of the country’s unique problem of too many guns.

The problem of mass shootings will likely be with us as long as we have more guns than people. “There’s no easy solution,” says Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. The ubiquity of guns makes preventing a mass shooting extremely difficult. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to prevent mass shootings. “One of the big stereotypes, or myths we have about mass shootings in general, is that perpetrators who do this go crazy and just snap,” says Mark Follman, author of the book Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America, and an editor at Mother Jones. “That’s not the reality at all of how this works.”

There are two broad approaches that can help mitigate the threat of mass shootings: proactive efforts to identify threats in advance, performed by behavioral threat assessment teams; and targeted gun regulations like red flag laws and bump stock bans.

Identifying the threat

Mass shootings are almost never random, according to Follman. The vast majority of mass shooters don’t spontaneously decide to pull out a gun in public and start shooting. Learning to identify who’s most at risk for committing mass violence, identifying warning signs and finding ways to intervene, can save lives. That’s what behavioral threat assessment teams do. The process and composition of a team can differ in various contexts, including educational, corporate, and law enforcement settings, but the general idea is the same: the teams receive information from community members about behavior that is concerning. The teams investigate that behavior to determine whether someone is at risk of committing mass violence. Then, depending on their conclusion, the team finds a way to reach out to the person and try to get them support before they commit an act of violence. That contact can happen at the person’s home, but it might also happen at work, school, or another community setting. It’s difficult to prove the efficacy of these interventions, because there’s no way to quantify the number of mass shootings that didn’t happen because someone got help. But experts and mental health advocates say the work has prevented people from carrying out violence, and Follman has reported on cases where law enforcement believes people were successfully diverted from committing acts of mass violence. [...]

Finding gun regulations that help prevent mass shootings

One appealing thing about behavioral threat assessment work is that it’s an intervention that can be done without butting head-first into the brick wall that is America’s intractable debate over gun control.

But make no mistake: a country with over 400 million guns in it, and with gun regulation so lax that almost anyone can carry a gun in public whenever they want, makes the work of preventing mass shootings much more difficult. Georgia doesn’t have safe storage laws, which in other states require guns to be locked up and kept away from children. The shooter’s father, when questioned by police in 2023, said that his son didn’t have “unfettered” access to his guns. A law requiring guns to be secured in the state might have made it harder for the shooter to have access to the weapon he used. There are other specific gun policies that can help prevent mass shootings and might be more politically feasible. Lawmakers and voters who care about reducing mass shootings have already helped push for their passage in states like New York, Florida, and California. For advocates who care about reducing mass shooting, they are a good place to start. One of the most important legal tools available to prevent mass shootings is extreme risk laws, commonly referred to as red flag laws. The laws, currently in place in 21 states, including several after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018, allow both family members and law enforcement to petition courts to temporarily confiscate someone’s firearms if they believe the owner is at a risk of committing harm either to themselves or others. Red flag laws, Follman says, are “a relatively new gun policy that is very important and very useful to the field of threat assessment.” Though critics have challenged the constitutionality of the laws, they have so far withstood legal challenges. Another common factor among mass shooters is their use of assault-style rifles, known for their capacity to rapidly fire bullets and to kill or injure large numbers of people in a short amount of time. Though research has shown that assault weapons bans can meaningfully reduce mass shooting deaths when they’re in effect, Republicans blocked an assault weapons ban when it came before Congress in December 2023, and polls show that while Americans generally favor more strict gun regulation, they are more divided on the question of whether to ban assault weapons outright.

Vox has a good story on the need to stop mass shootings before they happen.

[ethereal-bumble-bee]

I Was In Band Class

(Tw for mentions of school shootings, death, violence, and guns under the cut. I wrote this two days ago, but am posting it now bc it still stands strong.)

It was 10:08 am on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024.

I was in band class.

I had finally decided to eat lunch that day, and walked into the band room with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. My bass clarinet was not working, and I was worried about the results of my test.

It was 10:08 am on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024.

A 14 year-old boy in Georgia decided he wanted to watch his classmates die.

He shot up his high school that morning— 10:08 am on Wednesday, September 4th, 2024– killing two of his classmates and two of his teachers, injuring even more.

Those classmates were fourteen as well.

I was in band class, worried about my test, feeling relief when I was told I didn’t have to take it that day. 

They were dying at the hands of a boy their age, a boy just about my age. A boy our age.

It was 10:08 am on Wednesday, September 4th, and I was in band class. My friends were nervous about an upcoming audition for the spring musical, and I was assuring them they’d do great. 

They were bleeding out on the cold tile floor.

It is 8:56 am on Thursday, September 5th, 2024. We had an active shooter drill first block today, by pure coincidence. We hid in the corner of the classroom, talked about what we would do if someone tried to force their way in. Fight, flee, hide. Make not a sound. Don’t call our parents, just text them. Let them know we’re going to be okay.

I am in biology class. I got an 88% on today's quiz. I am worried about grades, and a date to homecoming, and whether I have time to turn in my geometry homework before it’s overdue.

They are in the morgue, awaiting their own funerals.

It was 10:08 am on Wednesday, September 4th. It is now 9:01 am on Thursday, September 5th. It is by pure luck and happenstance that I am here, in biology class, and not being mourned by my family and friends. It is by pure luck that it was not my high school that was shot up yesterday, that it was not one of my classmates that did it.

Politicians and citizens alike waffle and make excuses, whining about freedoms and rights as kids die by the hundreds each year, to a preventable cause. We have drills, we have talks, we have police officers with guns in our schools, but it’s never enough.

I sit here with a cold feeling in my chest, a grateful prayer in my heart, because I was in band class.

They were fourteen, he was fourteen, I am fifteen.

Don’t you dare think it can’t happen to you.