Investigators in Georgia seek answers to school shooter's access to weapon and motive

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Investigators in the U.S. state of Georgia have been investigating how a teenager got hold of the semi-automatic rifle he used to carry out a shooting spree at his school and whether there were other warning signs following a police home visit a year ago.

The student, identified as Colt Gray, opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine, police officials said.

Gray, 14, was questioned by police last year after threatening online to carry out a school shooting, investigators said. His father, who was also questioned, told officers he had hunting weapons in the house but his son did not have access to them.

The shooter's ability to get to the semi-automatic rifle, any signs that suggested he would actually shoot, and his motive are the focus of investigators looking into the first mass killing on a U.S. campus since the start of the academic year.

A Jackson County Sheriff's Department investigator interviewed the Grays last year but could not find any clues or evidence of an imminent threat to obtain the necessary court order to confiscate the family's gun.

“This case was being processed, and at the time the boy was 13, and there was not enough evidence,” Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said in an interview. “When we get a warrant or charge someone, we take firearms for safekeeping.”

Gray was arrested shortly after the shooting. He will be charged and tried as an adult, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Gray is being held without bail at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, Glenn Allen, communications director for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, said Thursday.

His video arraignment is scheduled for Friday before a Georgia Supreme Court judge in Barrow County.

Officials identified those killed as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. A teacher and eight students injured in the attack remained hospitalized, MSNBC reported Thursday.

The shooting reignited the national debate about gun control and sparked a wave of grief in a country where such attacks are a regular occurrence.

In Winder, a town of 18,000 residents about 80 kilometers northeast of Atlanta, people gathered in a park on Wednesday evening for a vigil for the victims.

Schermerhorn was a cheerful teenager who enjoyed visiting Disney World, where his family would soon vacation, family friends told the New York Times. His mother told an Atlanta news station that Schermerhorn was autistic.

Friends of Angulo said he loved to make people laugh.

“He was a very good boy, very sweet and caring,” wrote Lisette Angulo, who identified herself as the victim's eldest sister on a GoFundMe page she set up to cover funeral costs. “He was so loved by many.”

In addition to being a math teacher, Aspinwall was also the football team's defensive coordinator. He described himself as “a husband to a wonderful wife and father of two amazing girls” on his X account, where he frequently posted about football and shared pictures of his family.

Irimie also taught math at the school. A friend told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she immigrated from Romania in the 1990s and was involved in the expat community in Georgia, where she taught traditional dances to children in her free time.

The shooting was the first planned attack on a school this fall, said David Riedman, who maintains the K-12 school shooting database. Apalachee students returned to school last month; many other students across the U.S. are returning this week.

There have been hundreds of school and university shootings in the United States over the past two decades, the worst of which left more than 30 people dead at Virginia Tech in 2007. The carnage has intensified the heated debate over gun laws and the right to “keep and bear arms” enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien, Liya Cui and Andrew Hay; editing by Jonathan Oatis)