GA - Apalachee High School shooting, 4 dead, 9 injured, Winder, Barrow County - 04 September 2024 *father and son arrested*

[fred&edna]

IMO the US needs... parents who take responsibility for their offspring, and parents who take responsibility for their guns. Making babies is generally the easy part, parenting has never been easy. Parenting requires at least some mature behavior. Mature behavior is NOT buying your 14 yr old a semi-automatic rifle that he can access any time he wants. Trigger locks and gun safes aren't expensive... and if you're smart enough to purchase and operate a gun, then you're smart enough to LOCK it... really lock it! If adult parents need help (drugs, poverty, mental illness)... ask for it. Don't leave it up to someone else... that someone else might end up a murder victim because of your irresponsible behavior.

all jmo

 

[KMouse]

Georgia school shooting latest: 14-year-old suspect charged with murder, father also charged

The 14-year-old suspect behind Wednesday's deadly school shooting in Georgia has been charged with four counts of felony murder.

6abc.com

This is sad i love 2 know exactly y they didn’t investigate the Discord account more even after he said it wasn’t him and just let it go

Well they likely will now. Hindsight is 20/20 right? Sounds like the shooter came from an unstable environment from what we have seen posted by the mother's sister. The parents were probably too wrapped up in their own lives to give this kid the attention he needed. How terrible must the kid's life be that becoming a school shooter is what he feels is his only option.

 

[georgiajean]

IMOO something is very wrong here. One of these schools is just 2 miles from my home.

Georgia schools face threats, student arrests after Apalachee shooting

At least 11 students across Georgia have been arrested for making threats on social media toward schools or bringing weapons to class in the days after the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School.

www.fox5atlanta.com

I agree. Making me wonder if the call about 4 schools threatened is true, and there was a group that had planned this.... All MOO.

 

[RANCH]

IMO the US needs... parents who take responsibility for their offspring, and parents who take responsibility for their guns. Making babies is generally the easy part, parenting has never been easy. Parenting requires at least some mature behavior. Mature behavior is NOT buying your 14 yr old a semi-automatic rifle that he can access. Trigger locks and gun safes aren't expensive... and if you're smart enough to purchase and operate a gun, then you're smart enough to LOCK it... really lock it! If adult parents need help (drugs, poverty, mental illness)... ask for it. Don't leave it up to someone else... that someone else might end up a murder victim because of your irresponsible behavior.

all jmo

DBM Off topic.

 

[Sundog]

I think this kid grew up in an extremely abusive and traumatic place, sadly he probably had no stable reference point of normal mental health.

<snipped for focus>

IIRC, it was posted upthread that his mother has been in and out of jail over the last few years and is a drug addict as well and lost custody of her children at some point. So his family life has definitely not been a stable reference point for normal mental health.

EBM

 

[AtlantaBourne]

I agree. Making me wonder if the call about 4 schools threatened is true, and there was a group that had planned this.... All MOO.

Interesting thought. Also the news article states all these students arrested are now at the same youth detention facility as CG. MOO

 

[RANCH]

<snipped for focus>

IIRC, it was posted upthread that his mother has been in and out of correctional institutions for the past 17 years and is a drug addict as well. His family life has definitely not been a stable reference point for normal mental health.

Dysfunctional family. Very common for youth violence. Maybe a harder look at correcting that in time for possible prevention?

Just thinking out loud and not giving a solution. JMO.

 

[RANCH]

I hope to find out why this young person felt that it was ok to kill innocent people.

Maybe if we find the answer to that question we can find a way to possibly prevent future attacks like this. JMO.

 

[fred&edna]

When I was young it was common for teens to get guns as gifts and have access to them and there were virtual no school shootings.

Access to guns hasn't changed. Mental health problems where kids want to kill others has. That's the problem that needs to be addressed. JMO.

I never know if it's mental illness or a mental disorder or a mental psychosis that people discuss. I will admit I've heard PTSD, ADHD, ADD, Bi-polar, terms tossed around a lot more over the past 10 years. I can't even keep up with the alphabet soup of acronyms. I'm not sure why but I've thought there's more drug-addicted parents in the past 10 years. There was heroin, and on to pain-killing drugs pushed by drug companies, and fent, and ketamine and well whatever else is in the mix today.

This father knew his son was possibly troubled or at least needed some special guidance (per previous visit by FBI) so gifting him a gun with unfettered access was an responsible things to do. Teach the child about the gun, spend time with him and the gun if that's what he wanted to do. But, not doing these things and not locking the guns...could just create the basis for a perfect horror incident. jmo

 

[RANCH]

I never know if it's mental illness or a mental disorder or a mental psychosis that people discuss. I will admit I've heard PTSD, ADHD, ADD, Bi-polar, terms tossed around a lot more over the past 10 years. I can't even keep up with the alphabet soup of acronyms. I'm not sure why but I've thought there's more drug-addicted parents in the past 10 years. There was heroin, and on to pain-killing drugs pushed by drug companies, and fent, and ketamine and well whatever else is in the mix today.

This father knew his son was possibly troubled or at least needed some special guidance (per previous visit by FBI) so gifting him a gun with unfettered access was one of that last responsible things to do. Teach the child about the gun, spend time with him and the gun if that's what he wanted to do. But, not doing these things and not locking the guns...could just create the basis for a perfect horror incident. jmo

Thank you. I deleted my post because it went too far into gun control and not the specifics of this case.

You did a much better job than me with your reply.

 

[iamshadow21]

I think that pushing for a specific retribution motivation is going to be difficult for a defense in this case.

We've seen bullying come up before as a defense, but this was literally the defendant's first or second day at school. There wasn't time for him to have beef or antagonistic relationships with students or staff. That tells me that the 'who' of the equation didn't matter. He just wanted to kill anyone who crossed his path. And that is far harder for a jury to empathise with.

MOO

 

[Boxer]

I think that pushing for a specific retribution motivation is going to be difficult for a defense in this case.

We've seen bullying come up before as a defense, but this was literally the defendant's first or second day at school. There wasn't time for him to have beef or antagonistic relationships with students or staff. That tells me that the 'who' of the equation didn't matter. He just wanted to kill anyone who crossed his path. And that is far harder for a jury to empathise with.

MOO

Yes. CG had Adam Lanza's name disguised in Russian letters on Discord. He was idolizing school shooters.

 

[nightowl1975]

...the only way to provide for safety in a public school is to prevent the weapon from entering the building. I simply cannot, for the life of me, understand why courthouses, government buildings, airports, and a few other entities have secured their buildings, but public schools refuse to do so. Baffling.

We could theoretically secure the actual buildings, however I’m afraid that would simply move the shootings to the outdoor spaces of schools, i.e. parking lots, front walkways, exit pathways, playgrounds, etc.

I do think solutions will be like Swiss cheese with no one or two or even ten solutions preventing most shootings. I don’t believe it’s possible to prevent all shootings. And it does seem like there has been somewhat of a decrease in total number of fatalities per incident, but that’s just my perception, and I could be completely wrong.

 

[nightowl1975]

IDK, there were 4 murders.
The father has been charged with 4 counts of involuntary manslaughter, plus 2 counts of second degree murder.
We'll have to wait and see what kind of explanation their prosecutor has.

My first thought was only 2 counts of murder to preserve 2 more victims for a second trial if he’s found NG of murder for the first 2. There’s no double jeopardy attached if they don’t try him on murder charges for all 4 victims.

 

[nightowl1975]

It would be nice, but that's probably not going to happen. I'll be surprised if they continue with this recent trend of charging parents.

Really? I won’t at all, especially with such egregious glaring warning signs being outright ignored. I don’t agree that all parents should be charged criminally just because their child shoots people at school. There definitely needs to be evidence supporting the charges. But this case appears at first glance to be even more egregious than the Crumbley case.

 

[QB2022]

I wonder if dad knew he was going to shoot children so the two students are second degree murder but he was unaware of the two adults being targets (or the other way round) so that comes within manslaughter

 

[Dotta]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831941756566253755

https://twitter.com/x/status/1831941754230022344

 

[AtlantaBourne]

According to Georgia State Statute Homicide 16-5-1 in regard to 2nd degree murder being charged is due to the age of victims & the act of cruelty to children committed.

 

[Boxer]

Really? I won’t at all, especially with such egregious glaring warning signs being outright ignored. I don’t agree that all parents should be charged criminally just because their child shoots people at school. There definitely needs to be evidence supporting the charges. But this case appears at first glance to be even more egregious than the Crumbley case.

Gave his son a school shooter AR 15 after the FBI investigated and the local sheriffs contacted him about school shooting threats made by his son.

 

[Msl1966]

Sadly, threats are so common these days. Far more than people realize, unless you work in a school environment. Same thing happens every time. A threat comes into the school, the district, etc., usually by social media. Sometimes it is specific schools, sometimes it’s general. The authorities do a deep dive to find the location it came from, go to the home, interview person (usually teenager) and the parents, and find out if guns are accessible. The kid will say it was a joke and the parents will say the guns (if any) are secure. The student continues going to school since there isn’t anything that can be done. Oftentimes the threat is from a completely different state or one that was changed as it spread across media and appeared more specific to a certain school. That happens a lot. Example…kid is California posts that he/she is going to shoot up their school and anonymously posts on social media. Someone in Virgina sees it, screenshots it, and posts it. Someone else then screenshots it, posts it, and adds text warning friends not to go to school. Then those friends think it was originally posted about their school in Virgina, when it really started in California. School’s hands are tied.

Was the this week’s threat really CALLED in? In my 33 years of education, we’ve never had the actual threat called in. It’s always been through and anonymous tip line or social media. Those are handled immediately and often found to not be serious. I’m going to guess the threat was a hoax that ended up completely coincidental, or the shooter and some friends decided to make the threat but the friends had no idea the shooter was really going to do it. Although there are students that we know have made threats in the past, rarely has a shooter warned the school ahead of time except for last minute social media posts. The first question doesn’t need to be how did the shooter get a gun, or what was the shooter’s mental state, but HOW DID THE SHOOTER GET IT INTO SCHOOL AND HOW CAN WE STOP IT.