14-year-old boy kills four in US school shooting

Winder, United States – AFP

A 14-year-old boy killed four people, including two students, and wounded nine more when he opened fire at a high school in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, law enforcement said.

The suspected shooter — also a student at the school — had been brought to the FBI’s attention more than a year ago for threats to commit a school shooting, the agency said.

He was taken into custody after Wednesday’s shooting and will be tried as an adult on murder charges, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Two teachers were also among the dead.

After the latest chapter in America’s gun violence crisis — nearly 400 mass shootings this year alone, by one tally — people gathered at a sports field outside Apalachee High School, some forming a circle with their arms linked.

“Our school resource officer engaged him,” county sheriff Jud Smith told reporters, referring to law enforcement officers employed to work at US schools.

“The shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up that it would end with an OIS — an officer-involved shooting. He gave up, got on the ground, and the deputy took him into custody.”

Smith said police did not yet know if the shooter singled out specific people as targets, adding later that the nine wounded were expected to recover.

The two students killed were also 14 years old, authorities said.

– Gun violence ‘epidemic’ –

School shootings have become a sadly regular occurrence in the United States, where about a third of adults own a firearm and regulations on purchasing even powerful military-style rifles are lax.

Polls show a majority of voters favor stricter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the powerful gun ownership lobby is opposed to additional restrictions and lawmakers have repeatedly failed to act.

US President Joe Biden said he was mourning the dead.

“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,” he said.

Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire after the shooting, Vice President Kamala Harris said it was time to end the “epidemic of gun violence.”

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said the perpetrator of the shooting was a “sick and deranged monster.”

This year, there have been at least 384 mass shootings — defined as a shooting involving at least four victims, dead or wounded — across the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

At least 11,557 people have been killed in firearms violence in the United States this year, according to the GVA.