The 14-year-old boy charged in the shooting deaths of four people at his Georgia high school was investigated last year in connection with threatening a school shooting, but authorities did not have enough evidence to arrest him.
The Associated Press reports that the teen was interviewed in May 2023 by a sheriff’s investigator from nearby Jackson County who received a tip from the FBI that the boy, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.”
Asked about the threat, the teen told a sheriff’s investigator that “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the report said.
The 14-year-old, a student at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, has been charged as an adult in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder — were taken to hospitals with injuries. All are expected to survive.
Armed with an assault-style rifle, the teen began firing in a hallway at the school.
Two school resource officers encountered the shooter a short time later, and the teen immediately surrendered.
The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement. The tip came from people in Australia and California who were concerned about comments made by a chat group user on the social media platform Discord.
The sheriff’s office in Jackson County subsequently interviewed the then 13-year-old and his father. The teen denied making any online threats.
Authorities were still trying to determine how the teen obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school.
