Flowers are laid ou as students and faculty as well as community members gather for a vigil after a shooting at Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024 in Winder, Georgia. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
(WINDER, Ga.) — A Georgia community is in mourning after two students and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday morning, according to authorities.
Another nine victims were taken to hospitals with injuries, but are all expected to survive, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.
The suspect, a 14-year-old student, is in custody and will be tried as an adult, the GBI said.
Hosey identified the four victims Wednesday evening, whose ages ranged from 14 to 53 years old. Here is what we know about the four victims killed:
Mason Schermerhorn
Mason Schermerhorn was a 14-year-old student at the high school, according to the GBI.
Christian Angulo
Christian Angulo was a 14-year-old student at the high school, according to the GBI.
Richard Aspinwall
Richard Aspinwall was a 39-year-old teacher at Apalachee High School, according to the GBI.
Aspinwall was a math teacher who also coached football as the defensive coordinator, according to the school’s website.
Christina Irimie
Christina Irimie was a 53-year-old math teacher at Apalachee High School, according to the GBI.
(HUNTINGTON STATION, N.Y.) — Police are investigating after human remains were found inside a suitcase Tuesday on Long Island.
Officers responded to a 911 call Tuesday morning reporting “suspicious activity” in a wooded area near an apartment building in Huntington Station, New York, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
“Upon arriving, police found a person deceased in a suitcase next to the building,” police said in a press release.
The victim’s identity and cause of death is not yet known.
The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy, police said.
Police are requesting anyone with information concerning the incident to contact them.
A resident at the apartment complex told New York ABC station WABC she had heard the sounds of a woman screaming at about 3 a.m. on Sunday.
Another person living in the area said she saw police respond to the incident.
“The police came and lifted it and saw it was a body,” the individual said. “The smell was rancid. Potent.”
(NEW YORK) — A new species of dinosaur has been identified more than a decade after a large number of ancient skeletons were found in Spain — and researchers expect more species to be discovered.
The discovery was made at the Lo Hueco fossil site near Cuenca, a mountainous town in central Spain. The site was being excavated for the construction of a high-speed train between Madrid and Valencia when crews began digging up numerous ancient skeletons of dinosaurs, crocodiles and turtles, Pedro Mocho, a paleontologist at the University of Lisboa’s faculty of sciences, told ABC News.
Researchers then spent the next three months extracting several skeletons of dinosaurs, mostly sauropods, a herbivore characterized by having a very long neck, long tail, large body and small head, Mocho said.
The haul of fossils derived from that paleontological expedition, estimated to be about 72 million years old from the late Cretaceous period, produced Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra, a new species of titanosaur, according to the paper, published Wednesday in Communications Biology.
The Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra is characterized by having a “weird” tail morphology, in which all of the vertebrates are “anteriorly clean,” a feature only noted in a specific group of titanosaurs found in South America, Mocho said.
The dinosaur, which the skeleton belonged to, likely died as a sub-adult because the vertebras are “completely sutured,” meaning the animal likely did not reach its full-grown size, Mocho said.
All sauropods are herbivores, so the new species likely subsisted on a plant-based diet.
Another reason why paleontologists are fascinated by the new species is because Europe was an “insular environment” during the late Cretaceous period, and it was rare for an animal to grow so big under those conditions.
“A lot of dinosaurs are small because they have small areas to live in, so they have a small amount of resources,” Mocho said. “So, generally, the animals associated to insular environments are relatively small in some cases, and others, the opposite happens.”
Researchers are trying to determine whether the lineage for this species of sauropod originated in Asia or North America.
The new species was named Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra, in reference to the town of Cuenca as well as the painter Antonio Saura and Queen Pintiquiniestra, a character from the 16th-century book, “Amadis of Greece,” which was later referenced in “Don Quixote,” the 17th-century Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes.
While the area where the train passes through was completely cleared of more ancient bones, the remainder of the Lo Hueco site was given protections by the Spanish government, Mocho said.
At least two different sauropods were found on the site, Mocho said, adding that they are still sifting through the skeletons that require examination.
Researchers expect to not only discover more species from the fossils that were collected but to find more skeletons if and when additional excavations commence.
“We don’t know exactly how many bones we still have over there, but we still have some remains to collect,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A New York City teacher was struck by a stray bullet on the eve of the first day of school while setting up his classroom, police said.
The bullet flew through the window of the sixth-floor classroom, striking the 33-year-old teacher in his right hand, police said.
The incident occurred shortly before noon Wednesday at a middle school in the Bronx borough, according to the NYC Department of Education.
The bullet is believed to have been fired from an elevated surface a long distance from the school, M.S. 391, police said.
“The school was not targeted,” Deputy Chief Keiyon Ramsey with the NYPD’s Patrol Borough Bronx told reporters during a news briefing Wednesday.
The teacher suffered a graze wound to the palm of his right hand, Ramsey said. He was transported to a local hospital in stable condition and has since been released.
One fired bullet was recovered from the classroom and is being processed, Ramsey said.
Police are working to determine where the bullet came from and who fired it, according to Deputy Chief Louis Deceglie with the NYPD’s Detective Bureau Bronx Commanding Officer.
“We are currently searching all rooftops nearby, looking for both ballistic evidence and video evidence,” Deceglie told reporters during Wednesday’s briefing.
No students were in the classroom at the time of the shooting, as school does not start until Thursday. Additionally, no students were around the school at the time, Ramsey said.
“This egregious display of violence is both upsetting and reprehensible,” the DOE said in a statement. “NYPD immediately responded to the scene where one educator sustained non-life-threatening injuries. We will provide support additional support to this school community.”
There will be additional school safety agents and police officers at the middle school for the first day of school on Thursday “out of an abundance of caution,” Ramsey said.
(NEW YORK) — New York City is implementing a new Black Studies curriculum in its public schools from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 as students return this week.
“This is not a curriculum about a particular racial group, necessarily, but about the history of inequality and stratification hierarchy in the United States,” Sonya Douglass, a professor of Education Leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers College who helped craft the syllabus, told ABC News.
“When young people, as well as teachers, who may have not even had access to this content in their own training and education are grounded in that history and grounded in perspectives that may be different than their own, I think it helps us to better understand the challenges that we’re facing currently as a society.”
New York City Public Schools is the largest school district in the United States, with more than a million students. Douglass sees this as an opportunity for New York City schools to be an example for the rest of the country when it comes to education.
The curriculum provides a more inclusive set of perspectives throughout American history to further include the contributions of people of African descent in the U.S. and throughout the world, Douglass said. The curriculum, which is publicly available, acts as a supplement to NYC’s current syllabus — adding recommended reading lists, activities, full day lesson plans and additional units in addition to what students are already learning.
The move by NYC schools comes as some other states like Florida, Texas and Oklahoma limit what can be taught in classrooms or what books are available in schools. Legislators in support of such restrictions argue that certain lessons or material on race, gender or sex may cause some students to feel guilt or shame, while others liken some lessons to “indoctrination.”
The American Library Association documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023 — a record-breaking total in the organization’s more than 20 years of recording book banning attempts.
“We’re in the midst of a struggle over the minds of our children and how we choose to socialize them into American society,” Douglass said. “So I see all of this is very much connected in terms of some states who want to limit the teaching of the truth, and others that want to create a more accurate and expansive accounting of our history and contribution.”
The curriculum was created in a three-year-long effort by the Educational Equity Action Plan (EEAP) Initiative, which was funded by the New York City Council. The curriculum was first piloted during the 2023-2024 school year in 120 schools across all five boroughs of New York, according to Columbia University’s Teachers College.
Council Speaker Adrienne Adams believes it’s crucial for students to see themselves reflected in the contents of their education, her office told ABC News in a statement. Black students make up approximately 24% of NYC’s public school student population.
“Speaker Adams is excited by the launch of the new Black Studies Curriculum in New York City’s public schools, which will provide students the opportunity to learn about the contributions and legacies of early African civilizations, African-American history, and the modern-day African diaspora,” the statement said.
(WINDER, Ga.) — Joshua Maloch thought his Georgia high school was holding an active shooter drill when an alarm went off Wednesday morning alerting a school lockdown.
“We all had to get into the corner of my class and duck down,” the 10th grader at Apalachee High School in Winder, told ABC News.
“I didn’t think it was real, because a lot of times I have drills,” he added.
It was when he heard multiple shots ring out that he said feared for his life and was scared his brother and sister might not make it out.
“Everybody was scared, and people were screaming, calling their moms, everything,” he said.
Two students and two teachers were killed and another nine victims were taken to hospitals with injuries in the shooting at Apalachee High School, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The suspect — a 14-year-old male student at the high school — is in custody, authorities said.
Alexandra Romero, a sophomore at Apalachee High School, told ABC News that students in her classroom began hugging each other while covering during the shooting.
“I was scared. I had so much fear, like I’m still shaking, like I was so scared. I didn’t know my like feelings were so heightened. I cried too,” she said.
She said that after they were able to leave the classroom, she saw a teacher on the floor and “blood everywhere.”
“I’m definitely scared to go back. I talked with my parents and stuff. I don’t feel safe going back there for a while,” she said. “It’s hard to get out of my head, like seeing that body right there.”
Senior Sergio Caldera, 17, said he was in chemistry class when he heard 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,” Caldera told ABC News.
He said his teacher locked the door and the students ran to the back of the room. Caldera said they heard screams from outside as they “huddled up.”
At some point, Caldera said someone pounded on his classroom door and shouted “Open up!” multiple times. When the knocking stopped, Caldera said he heard more gunshots and screams.
He said his class later evacuated to the football field.
Kyson Stancion said he was in class when he heard gunshots and “heard police scream, telling somebody, ‘There’s a shooting going on, get down, get back in the classroom.'”
“I was scared because I’ve never been in a school shooting,” he told ABC News.
“Everybody was crying. My teacher tried to keep everybody safe,” he added.
Sherley Martinez, a 12th grader at the school, said she was in a classroom when she heard gunshots ring out.
“Kids started crying, everyone was freaking out,” she told ABC News.
She said she was scared but tried to comfort her classmates.
“I tried to keep everybody comfortable,” she said. “I was telling everybody, ‘It’s going to be OK.'”
“In our small town, we’d never really would expect anything like this to happen,” she added.
ABC News’ Faith Abubey and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(WINDER, Ga.) — Two students and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Another nine victims were taken to hospitals with injuries, the GBI said.
The suspect — 14-year-old Colt Gray, a student at Apalachee High School — was encountered by officers within minutes, and he immediately surrendered and was taken into custody, the GBI said. He will be charged with murder and he will be tried as an adult, the GBI said.
It’s not clear if any of the victims were targeted, authorities said.
“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,” Caldera told ABC News.
He said his teacher locked the door and the students ran to the back of the room. Caldera said they heard screams from outside as they “huddled up.”
At some point, Caldera said someone pounded on his classroom door and shouted “open up!” multiple times. When the knocking stopped, Caldera said he heard more gunshots and screams.
He said his class later evacuated to the football field.
Kyson Stancion said he was in class when he heard gunshots and “heard police scream, telling somebody, ‘There’s a shooting going on, get down, get back in the classroom.'”
“I was scared because I’ve never been in a school shooting,” he told ABC News.
“Everybody was crying. My teacher tried to keep everybody safe,” he added.
Dad Jonathan Mills said he experienced an “emotional roller coaster” as he and his wife rushed to the school and waited to get ahold of their son, Jayden.
It was “exhilarating” and “overwhelming” to reach Jayden, a junior, and learn he was OK, Mills told ABC News.
Mills, a police officer, said, “Growing up in this area, you don’t expect things like that to happen.”
“I have three children. All three of them go to this cluster of schools, and you never think about that,” he said.
Winder is about 45 miles outside of Atlanta.
Barrow County Schools will be closed through the end of the week, the superintendent said.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith called the shooting “pure evil.”
Leaders react
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed on the shooting, according to the White House.
“Jill and I are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence and thinking of all of the survivors whose lives are forever changed,” Biden said in a statement. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
The president highlighted his work to combat gun violence, including signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law and launching the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. But he stressed that more must be done.
“After decades of inaction, Republicans in Congress must finally say ‘enough is enough’ and work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun safety legislation,” Biden said. “We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers. These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart.”
Harris said at a campaign event in New Hampshire, “Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families.”
“This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies,” she said. “We have to end this epidemic of gun violence.”
“This is one of the many issues that’s at stake in this election,” Harris said.
“Let us finally pass an assault weapons ban and universal background checks and red flag laws,” she said. “It is a false choice to say you are either in favor of the Second Amendment, or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I know we need reasonable gun safety laws in our country.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he is “heartbroken.”
“This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event,” he said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with local, state, and federal partners to make any and all resources available to help this community on this incredibly difficult day and in the days to come.”
In Atlanta, authorities will “bolster patrols” around schools on Wednesday “out of an abundance of caution,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement.
“My prayers are with the high school students, staff and families affected by the senseless act of violence,” Dickens said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Brandon Baur, Faith Abubey and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(WINDER, Ga.) — Four people were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Another nine victims were taken to hospitals with injuries, the GBI said.
The suspect is alive and in custody, the GBI said. The suspect is a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Senior Sergio Caldera, 17, said he was in chemistry class when he heard 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,” Caldera told ABC News.
He said his teacher locked the door and the students ran to the back of the room. Caldera said they heard screams from outside as they “huddled up.”
At some point, Caldera said someone pounded on his classroom door and shouted “open up!” multiple times. When the knocking stopped, Caldera said he heard more gunshots and screams.
He said his class later evacuated to the football field.
Kyson Stancion said he was in class when he heard gunshots and “heard police scream, telling somebody, ‘There’s a shooting going on, get down, get back in the classroom.'”
“I was scared because I’ve never been in a school shooting,” he told ABC News.
“Everybody was crying. My teacher tried to keep everybody safe,” he added.
Apalachee High School was “cleared for dismissal” and all other Barrow County Schools were placed on a “soft lockdown,” the Barrow County School District said.
“The Barrow County Sheriff’s Office says this is for the safety of everyone right now. Please do not visit your child’s school at this time. We cannot release students during a lockdown,” the school district said in a statement. “We will let you know as soon as [the sheriff’s office] says it is all clear for dismissal.”
Winder is about 45 miles outside of Atlanta.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed on the shooting, according to the White House.
“Jill and I are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence and thinking of all of the survivors whose lives are forever changed,” Biden said in a statement. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
The president highlighted his work to combat gun violence, including signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law and launching the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. But he stressed that more must be done.
“After decades of inaction, Republicans in Congress must finally say ‘enough is enough’ and work with Democrats to pass common-sense gun safety legislation,” Biden said. “We must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines once again, require safe storage of firearms, enact universal background checks, and end immunity for gun manufacturers. These measures will not bring those who were tragically killed today back, but it will help prevent more tragic gun violence from ripping more families apart.”
Harris said at a campaign event in New Hampshire, “Our hearts are with all the students, the teachers and their families.”
“This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies,” she said. “We have to end this epidemic of gun violence.”
“This is one of the many issues that’s at stake in this election,” Harris said.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he is “heartbroken.”
“This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event,” he said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with local, state, and federal partners to make any and all resources available to help this community on this incredibly difficult day and in the days to come.”
In Atlanta, authorities will “bolster patrols” around schools on Wednesday “out of an abundance of caution,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement.
“My prayers are with the high school students, staff and families affected by the senseless act of violence,” Dickens said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Josh Margolin and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(INDIANAPOLIS) — A man has been arrested in the 1993 rape and murder of his 19-year-old neighbor in Indiana after he was linked to the case through genetic genealogy, authorities said.
On March 24, 1993, Carmen Van Huss’ father went to her Indianapolis apartment to check on her after she didn’t show up for work. He found his daughter dead on the floor, according to the probable cause affidavit.
She was naked and had multiple puncture wounds to her head, face and body, the document said.
“There were obvious signs of a struggle, including a knocked over table, clothing thrown on the floor, a large pooling of blood near the victim’s head, and blood spatter around the victim’s body,” the probable cause affidavit said.
A resident in the apartment directly below Van Huss told police that, in the early hours of March 23, he heard screams, crying, slamming, banging and “noises and voices of a male arguing that lasted approximately 30 minutes,” the probable cause affidavit said.
In the years that followed, police said they interviewed dozens of people and followed up on hundreds of leads. But the case went cold.
In 2013, the unknown suspect’s DNA was uploaded to CODIS — the nationwide law enforcement DNA database — but there wasn’t a match, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Then, in 2018, police said they submitted a DNA sample from the crime scene to Parabon NanoLabs to try to solve the case with forensic genetic genealogy — a new investigative tool that takes unknown DNA and identifies it by comparing it to family members who voluntarily submitted their DNA samples to a database.
In 2023, police said “various investigative methods and lead information from the genetic genealogy analysis” led to a suspect’s name: Dana Shepherd.
Police determined Shepherd was Van Huss’ neighbor in 1993. Their apartment buildings were connected internally by a shared common area, according to the probable cause affidavit.
In February, police were granted a warrant to obtain DNA from Shepherd, who was now living in Missouri and working at the University of Missouri, the probable cause affidavit said.
When police showed Shepherd the warrant, he “was visibly shaking,” the document said.
In June, testing determined that Shepherd’s DNA matched the DNA on Van Huss’ body and at the crime scene, police said.
Shepherd, 52, was arrested in Missouri last week on charges of murder, felony murder and rape, police said. He has not yet been extradited to Indiana, police said.
“There’s a lot of people that missed Carmen all these years,” Van Huss’ brother, Jimmy Van Huss Jr., said at a news conference Tuesday. “She had a lot of family, a lot of friends. She had cousins that loved her like sisters.”
“She wasn’t able to experience her college graduation or have a wedding or any of life’s events,” he said.
“She was taken from me when I was a freshman in high school. And I’m thankful that, finally, the man that did it is where he needs to be,” he said. “I do have hope that any similar case with DNA can get this same treatment with the genealogy and everything we have available today.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Charges were filed in juvenile court against the 17-year-old boy arrested in connection with the shooting of San Francisco 49ers’ player Ricky Pearsall, according to prosecutors.
The teen is facing three charges: Attempted murder, assault with a semi-automatic firearm and attempted second degree robbery charge.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the city has been “traumatized and it’s now my job and my office’s job to make sure that we have accountability.”
The DA’s office does not make the determination if the juvenile will be tried as an adult, however, Jenkins can request a fitness hearing in front of a judge but a decision has not been made yet if the hearing will be requested.
The teen is set to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon at the Youth Guidance Center in San Francisco.
San Francisco Police Department is looking for every possible camera that captured the incident and actively collecting and reviewing to put together timeline, officials said.
Pearsall was released from the hospital 24 hours after being shot during an attempted robbery in San Francisco’s Union Square.
The 23-year-old rookie “sustained a bullet wound to his chest,” the 49ers said in a statement.
“He is extremely lucky,” Pearsall’s mom, Erin Pearsall, wrote on Facebook.
“By the grace of God, Ricky Pearsall is here with the team and doing really well,” said John Lynch, general manager of the San Francisco 49ers. “He’s doing remarkably, so much better today than he was yesterday. Really, really miraculous. Didn’t touch organs and feels like all the nerve stuff is good. I mean, it’s pretty, pretty remarkable.”
Lynch said Pearsall was luggage shopping for game day road trips before he was attacked in Union Square and that the team has rallied around Pearsall since the shooting.
“We had a team party that was scheduled when I got to the hospital and visited with Ricky,” Lynch said. “We were able to pipe Ricky into the party and he FaceTimed the entire group and and that show of love and respect was … a real special moment for our team.”
“Just super happy, super happy that he’s alive,” said 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk. “We’re able to see him and talk to him.”
“Thank god Ricky’s alive and he’s healthy and he’s going to make a full recovery,” said 49ers offensive lineman Jake Brendel.
On Monday, the National Football League added Pearsall to the reserve/non-football injury list, stating he will miss at least four games of the season, according to ESPN.
