Apalachee High School Shooting in Georgia: Suspect Apprehended as First Details Emerge

On Sep­tem­ber 4th, 2024, a shoot­ing inci­dent took place at Apalachee High School in Winder, Geor­gia, approx­i­mate­ly 25 miles west of Athens.

The Bar­row Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office con­firmed that mul­ti­ple casu­al­ties have been report­ed, and one sus­pect has been tak­en into custody.

The active shoot­er sit­u­a­tion was report­ed at around 10:23 AM, prompt­ing a lock­down of the high school, which has an enroll­ment of around 1,900 stu­dents. Eye­wit­ness accounts from ter­ri­fied stu­dents describe hear­ing gun­shots and the sub­se­quent chaos as they were ush­ered to safety.

One senior, Ser­gio Can­dera, told ABC News that he was in a chem­istry class when he heard the gun­shots. “My teacher goes and opens the door to see what’s going on.

Anoth­er teacher comes run­ning in and tells her to close the door because there’s an active shoot­er,” Can­dera said, adding that he heard screams from out­side his class­room as he and his class­mates “hud­dled up.”

As the sit­u­a­tion unfold­ed, des­per­ate par­ents rushed to the scene, cry­ing and fran­ti­cal­ly ask­ing for updates on their chil­dren’s well-being. Some par­ents even ran about a mile, leav­ing their cars behind, in a des­per­ate attempt to get clos­er to the school.

The Bar­row Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s Office, Geor­gia State Police, the FBI’s Atlanta office, and oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies are respond­ing to the incident. 

The school dis­trict has informed par­ents that they can begin pick­ing up their chil­dren, while oth­er schools in the dis­trict remain on a “soft lock­down” as a precaution.

Pres­i­dent Biden has been briefed on the shoot­ing, and the White House has stat­ed that the admin­is­tra­tion will con­tin­ue to coor­di­nate with fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cials as more infor­ma­tion becomes available.