Winder (Ga)

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares99 Views

    After Georgia Shooting, a Grief-Stricken City Seeks Solace, and Answers

    by

    At candlelight vigils and in Sunday church services, at fund-raisers for funerals and in quiet moments at home, another city began wrestling with a grief that has been inflicted on numerous American communities before it, a profound sorrow swirled with anger and confusion caused by a deadly mass shooting.And now, those emotions in Winder, Ga., were streaked with budding doubts there had been missed opportunities to intervene before a gunman killed two students and two teachers last week at Apalachee High School.Some in the community — including family members of victims, and students and parents at the school — expressed increased skepticism on Sunday about whether indications that the 14-year-old suspect was a threat had been adequately heeded by the teenager’s family, school officials and law enforcement officials.The concern grew after reports emerged of the suspect’s mother calling the school roughly a half-hour before the authorities responded to the shooting, apparently to warn them.“We believe it was preventable — 100 percent,” Lisette Angulo, the older sister of Christian Angulo, a 14-year-old boy who was killed, said of her and her family’s perspective in a message sent to The New York Times. “They knew of the situation beforehand,” she said, “and didn’t take proper action to prevent this tragedy from happening.”Ms. Angulo praised the officers and emergency workers who responded to the shooting on Wednesday morning, namely the school resource officers to whom the suspect surrendered. They had acted “efficiently and appropriately,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares106 Views

      in Elections

      Mother of Georgia Suspect Called School Minutes Before Shooting, Family Says

      by

      The mother told relatives she reached out to the school on Wednesday morning, warning of an emergency, the suspect’s aunt said Saturday.The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting four people at his Georgia high school this week told relatives that she had called the school on the morning of the attack, warning of an “extreme emergency,” her sister said on Saturday.Officials said the suspect, Colt Gray, opened fire on Wednesday morning on the campus of Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., killing two students and two teachers and injuring nine others. The authorities said reports of a shooting came in at about 10:20 a.m. But the suspect’s mother, Marcee Gray, had apparently called the school at 9:50 a.m., her sister, Annie Brown, said.It was unclear what in particular led the mother to call the school that morning.The emergence of the possible alert from the suspect’s mother intensifies the scrutiny now applied to his family, school officials and law enforcement officials about missed opportunities to heed warning signs and intervene before the attack.Ms. Gray told Ms. Brown in a text message after the shooting that she had notified a counselor at the school, Ms. Brown said. The phone call to the school was first reported on Saturday by The Washington Post, which cited Ms. Brown, text messages and a call log from the family’s shared phone plan that documented a 10-minute phone call from the mother’s number to the school.Ms. Brown confirmed the details of The Post’s reporting to The New York Times on Saturday evening. And a federal law enforcement official confirmed that the mother had called the school shortly before the shooting.A spokeswoman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which has been handling the investigation, declined to comment on Saturday. Jud Smith, the sheriff for Barrow County, Ga., where the shooting occurred, did not immediately reply to messages seeking comment, nor did officials from the Barrow County School System.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares90 Views

      in Elections

      Father of Accused Georgia Shooter Charged With Two Counts of Second-Degree Murder

      by

      The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was arrested and charged on Thursday with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the attack, the state’s Bureau of Investigation said.The father, Colin Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, officials said at a news conference on Thursday night.The charges against Mr. Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, the bureau director, said at the news conference. He declined to provide details, including what evidence had given the authorities probable cause to charge Mr. Gray in the attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.Earlier on Thursday, Charlie Polhamus, the teenager’s maternal grandfather, said he believed his grandson was responsible for what happened, but he also cast some of the blame on the tumult in the teenager’s home life with his father, who had split from Mr. Polhamus’s daughter. “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” Mr. Polhamus said. When investigators looking into an online threat spoke to Mr. Gray last year, he said he had been teaching his son, then 13, about hunting and guns to divert his attention from video games. The teenager denied making the threat to “shoot up a middle school” and claimed his account on the social media platform Discord had been hacked, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview.Mr. Gray told the investigator that he had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He also suggested that he had emphasized the dangers of using a firearm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares73 Views

      in Elections

      What We Know About the Apalachee High School Shooting Victims

      by

      The shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., on Wednesday killed two teachers and two students, becoming the deadliest episode of school violence in the state’s history. At least nine others were injured.The authorities identified the dead students as two 14-year-olds, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. The educators killed were identified as Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, officials said. Spellings of the names were not confirmed by the authorities.Law enforcement officials said in a news conference that the victims taken to the hospital were expected to make a full recovery.“Those that are deceased are heroes in my book,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “Those that are in the hospital recovering right now are heroes in my book.”Mason Schermerhorn was described by friends of his family as a lighthearted teenager who liked spending time with his family, reading, telling jokes, playing video games and visiting Walt Disney World. He had recently started at the school.“He really enjoyed life,” said Doug Kilburn, 40, a friend who has known Schermerhorn’s mother for a decade. “He always had an upbeat attitude about everything.”Louis Briscoe, a co-worker and friend of Schermerhorn’s mother, said the boy and his family were looking forward to an upcoming vacation there.When Mr. Briscoe learned about the shooting at the high school in the afternoon, he called Schermerhorn’s mother to ask if everything was OK. She told him: “Mason’s gone.”“My heart just dropped,” said Mr. Briscoe, 45. He added, “Nobody should have to go through this type of pain.”The gunman — who the authorities identified as a 14-year-old student at the school — will be charged with murder, officials said. Students heard gunfire as they barricaded themselves in classrooms.The shooting has shaken residents in Winder, which has about 18,000 residents and is roughly 50 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.At the high school, Ms. Irimie and Mr. Aspinwall were math teachers. Mr. Aspinwall was also the football team’s defensive coordinator.David Phenix, a math special education teacher and the school’s golf coach, was injured during the shooting. Katie Phenix, his daughter, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he was shot in the foot and hip, shattering his hip bone.“He arrived to the hospital alert and awake,” she wrote in the post, adding that he had surgery earlier that day.Kate Selig More