Students and teachers at Georgia’s Apalachee high school – where a teenager carried out a deadly mass shooting on Wednesday – are being praised for the bravery they demonstrated when faced with unimaginable circumstances.
Meanwhile, more information is emerging about the 14-year-old shooter who allegedly thrust them into those circumstances.
Four people were killed and nine others wounded during the attack at the high school in Winder, Georgia, outside Atlanta, which the shooter carried out with an AR-15-style rifle.
Throughout the shooting, Apalachee students attempted to stop the attacker multiple times and were the first to try to aid the injured, CNN reported.
A 14-year-old student tried to stop the shooter from entering the classroom when the pupil noticed the attacker’s gun, CNN reported.
Student Lyela Sayarath told CNN that the shooter had attempted to enter a first-year algebra classroom but was stopped. The shooter then went to the classroom next door and opened fire.
Another student managed to close a classroom door, preventing the shooter from entering – and was shot in the process.
In a Facebook post reported by National Public Radio, teacher Jennifer Carter described urging her students to get behind some couches in the classroom and – as she had been trained to do in the event of a mass shooting – telling them to be quiet. She said she decided to tell them it was all a drill to keep them as calm as possible.
“I told them … the more quiet we are the faster the drill will end,” Carter said. “I knew it was a lie. … [But] my kids were able to just hide and not panic for 10 minutes.”
She hailed her “kids” for being “so brave”.
“They still trusted me and did exactly what I asked. … No idea what’s going on. More yelling, banging on doors. Finally, the door is opening and we’re evacuated to the football field. Cops everywhere. Guns pointed at us as we leave. And still they do exactly what I ask.”
Richard Aspinwall, a 39-year-old mathematics teacher who was one of four people killed in Wednesday’s shooting, reportedly died while trying to protect his students during the rampage.
Aspinwall reportedly heard banging on lockers near the classroom. Students reported to ABC News that he left the class to try to protect them.
“My teacher, Coach Aspinwall, he opened the door, and he ran outside to see what’s going on,” Stephanie Reyna, 17, told ABC News.
Students say they heard the sound of gunshots and then saw Aspinwall lying in the classroom. “He was just there, in the doorway, just laying there. He was trying to crawl back to us.
“We just think he was trying to get to us,” the student told ABC.
Sophomore Kaylee Abner, who was in her geometry class during the shooting, told the Associated Press that her teacher had helped barricade the classroom she was in as shots rang out in the building. Later, as students fled into the school’s football stadium, Abner said, she noticed several teachers had removed their shirts while trying to stanch bloodied gunshot wounds.
A police officer stationed at the school ultimately confronted the shooter, Colt Gray, who at that point surrendered and was jailed on four counts of murder.
The shooter, who will be tried as an adult, will also face additional charges in connection to those wounded.
The father of the alleged shooter, 54-year-old Colin Gray, was also charged in connection with the shooting, according to the Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI).
Colin Gray faces several charges, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. He is accused of providing his son with multiple guns used in the mass shooting, even after knowing that his child “was a threat to himself and others”.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” the GBI director, Chris Hosey, told reporters during a Thursday news conference.
The home life of the accused shooter simultaneously has come under scrutiny. The teenage suspect reportedly lived with just his father and frequently spent time shooting guns and hunting animals, the Associated Press reported.
The teen and his father had lived alone together after an eviction the year before that led to the separation of the teen’s parents.
An aunt of the suspected shooter told the Washington Post that the teen struggled with his mental health and was “begging for months” for help before allegedly carrying out Wednesday’s attack.
He “was begging for help from everybody around him”, Annie Brown, the teen’s aunt, said to the Post. “The adults around him failed him.”
Brown had sent text messages to a relative about the teen’s mental health challenges and his access to firearms, the Post reported.
Family members of the teen had reportedly been meeting with school counselors to arrange for therapy.
Wednesday’s deadly school shooting renewed the public debate about safe storage laws for guns, and prompted parents to grapple with talking to their children about trauma and school shootings, which occur in the US at a disproportionate rate.
