WPBN: After carrying a pistol to Apalachee High School on Wednesday, a 14-year-old kid was taken into custody. This is the same high school in Georgia where a shooting occurred in September, killing two teachers and two pupils while injuring others.
At the school in Winder, which is roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta, school resource police detained the youngster Wednesday afternoon “without incident,” according to the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office.
When confronted by law authorities, the kid was “cooperative and compliant, and there have been no reports of the student threatening anyone with the gun,” according to deputies.
The pupil was brought to a juvenile prison facility in Gainesville, but his name was withheld due to his age. He faces two charges: being a minor in possession of a gun, stealing, and possessing a weapon on school property.
The type of firearm seized was not disclosed by the deputies. Authorities claimed that the student was taken into custody at the school just after 2:00 p.m., but they did not specify when he came or provide information on the specifics of the arrest.
The almost 2,000-student high school, which is roughly 45 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of downtown Atlanta, had its classes canceled by the Barrow County school district on Thursday.
Teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, as well as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, all 14, were killed in the Sept. 4 shooting. Eight further children and another teacher were injured, seven of them from gunshot wounds.
In addition to canceling on-campus extracurricular activities, the district informed parents that staff and kids should not report to school on Thursday. An open house to see the new portable classrooms that were set up on campus to replace the classrooms in the now-closed-off hallway where the shooting occurred was also canceled by the district.
The arrest occurred on Wednesday after a group of parents, teachers, and students demanded at a Barrow County school board meeting on Tuesday that the district implement more obvious security measures at Apalachee.
They recommended hiring more school resource officers, requiring backpacks to be clear, and purchasing a computerized camera system that, according to its manufacturer, uses artificial intelligence to detect firearms.
During the meeting, Superintendent Dallas LeDuff stated that the district has met with school resource officers to discuss the security measures they recommend and will submit the findings of a security survey later this month.
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Following the September incident, 14-year-old Colt Gray was prosecuted as an adult and indicted on 55 counts, including 25 counts of aggravated assault at the high school and murder. He entered a not guilty plea.
Prosecutors claimed that Colin Gray let his son to obtain firearms and ammunition “after receiving sufficient warning” that the kid would hurt people, leading to his father’s indictment on 29 charges, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Colin Gray has entered a not guilty plea as well.
“It has been a very intentional process,” LeDuff stated. “I think I am proud of the work our staff has done.”
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