The four people killed in a school shooting in Georgia have been identified.
Both students were 14 years old.
Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, who were teachers at the school, were also killed, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
All of the injured, who were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, are going to make it, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters in a briefing, citing hospital staffers. “We don’t expect any more fatalities,” he said.
“Those that are deceased are heroes in my book,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told the briefing. “Those that are in the hospital recovering right now are heroes in my book.”
Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, “It’s just outrageous that every day, in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive.”
Apalachee High School, which opened in 2000, has about 1,900 students, according to records from Georgia education officials.
Colt entered the school in the morning and started opening fire, authorities said. Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes after a report of shots fired went out, according to Hosey.
“As soon as they made contact with him, he gave up immediately,” Smith said.
Two officers are regularly stationed at the school. A third happened to be there on Wednesday to assist those two, Smith said.
The officers are “the true heroes as well,” Smith said.
Authorities were still looking into how the suspect obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school in Barrow County, a rapidly suburbanizing area on the edge of metropolitan Atlanta’s ever-expanding sprawl.
On Wednesday in Winder, Landon Culver, an 11th grader, said he had stepped out of his algebra class to get a drink of water when he heard shots and then saw someone wearing a black hoodie with a long gun.
“I didn’t really stick around too long to look,” he said.
Instead, he ran back inside the classroom and locked the door. The class huddled in the back in the dark and waited for the rampage to end. Culver listened as gunshots rang out in the building.
“You’re just wondering, which one of those is going to be somebody that you’re best friends with or somebody that you love?” he said. “You hear about this kind of stuff, but you never think it’s going to happen to you until it’s happening.”
When Erin Clark, 42, received a text from her son Ethan, a senior, saying there was an active shooter, she rushed from her job at the Amazon warehouse to the school. The two texted “I love you,” and Clark prayed for him as she drove.
With the main road to the school blocked, she parked and ran with other parents. They were directed to the football field, and amid the chaos, Clark found Ethan sitting on the bleachers.
Clark said her son was writing an essay in class when he first heard gunfire. He worked with his classmates to barricade the door and hide.
“I’m so proud of him for doing that,” she said. “He was so brave.
“It makes me scared to send him back. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
