Apalachee High School shooting victims identified | full press conference

uh as you can tell we know that it's been a long day I want to thank you for being patient with us today I want to thank you for uh understanding that this is still an active crime scene but from the minute that this tragic incident happened today uh Governor KMP has been with me and been talking to me and several times and has been on our side and law enforcement side and I wanted to introduce him to make a few statements uh again thank you for your patience and at this time I'm going to introduce the governor and then uh director hosy will will uh take answers and questions after that well thank you Sheriff I just want to thank you and your team for the incredible work that they've done the response of our First Responders today has been unreal uh superintendent lauff principal U looy who just did incredible job with these kids uh this hits home for us uh being from Athens just down the road Marty and I having a daughter that taught first grade just a few years ago uh this is everybody's worst nightmare and I just want to offer my sincere condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families of that have lost loved ones for those that are injuring and injured and continuing to fight uh through just a tragic time for really this whole Community that's been affected by today's actions and I just cannot thank the First Responders enough I cannot thank director hosy um Colonel Hitchens director stalins at gima the whole state response I want to thank uh special agent Farley and her team from the FBI FBI that are embedded with us uh in the school as we speak running down every single lead and other things that director hosy will mentioned tonight um you know I represented bar County when I was in the state senate 20 years ago these are our neighbors these are our friends and this community is hurting today and I would just ask all Georgians and all Americans to continue continue to keep these families these Educators and these students in your thoughts and prayers and we will provide every state resource that is needed from here until they're not to support this community and support this team behind me with that I'll turn it over to director hos thank you Governor real quick we wanted to Pro provide some additional updates uh from today's events and and I will mention too that this will be our last update for the evening so I please hope you'll understand that uh let me start by saying that there is no evidence to report that any additional shooter was involved in this incident today uh investigators are actively pursuing however any leads of any potential Associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident so I say that to say we're following up any potential leads through the investigation to ensure if there are any Associates involved in this that we TR we find them we identify them uh so that's part of again the ongoing investigation uh there is no evidence of of the list of schools being targeted however there is a lot of evidence that is being recovered and evaluated we're going through everything to determine if there is any active threats to any schools in this area this County and the state of Georgia and we will continue to monitor that uh throughout this investigation throughout the evening as we as we carry on there was a a call uh as we're aware of to a local high school as well this morning with a reported threat uh police responded and investigated and determined that there was no uh threat after all uh there's been reports that a Colton gray who is another student here at the school was involved or a Colton at Colton gray was uh involved in this if you recall from a previous press conference early this afternoon the individual that we have arrested and will be charged with this his name is Colt gray uh but there is another student here at the school with a very similar name we want to ensure everyone that Colton gray is is not involved in this incident that is the name that I provided you earlier this afternoon so those reports were in accurate uh if that if that was was passed on to you I do however want to identify the victims of this of this incident today those that lost their life in this tragic event Mason sherah horn age 14 who is a student here at the school Christian Ang who was 14 also a student here at the school Richard aspenwall not uh sure of his age but he was a teacher here at the school and Christina uh uh IR Marie I'm sorry for my pronunciation who is also a teacher here at the school we will post a list of these victims uh for the correct spellings for everyone uh later this evening after we complete the Press conf here also as has been released the FBI's national uh threat operations center has rece received anonymous tips in the past of online threats to commit School violent or school shootings at an undetermined location in time the FBI referred this information to the Jackson County Sheriff Office for Action uh the Jackson County Sheriff's Office identified and located gray who is our suspect in this case they conducted conducted an investigation at that time and there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action uh this is not recent this is in the past but we wanted to bring that to your attention uh because we are pursuing that uh working with the FBI on that and any connection to that that incident that could be connected to today's incident as well also we're also aware of uh some previous contacts that Department of Family and Children Services in the area had had with the suspect in his family and we are pursuing uh that Avenue as well too to see if that has any connection with today's incident let me stress again as we have many times that this is still a very fluid investigation it is still very active uh we will have agents and there will be law enforcement Personnel that will be P pursuing investigative leads and collecting evidence throughout the night and then to much of tomorrow I would anticipate as well we again ask for your patience in that this is a criminal investigation uh and we're going to treat it like that uh so I apologize ahead of time if we don't answer some of the uh the question that you may ask so please understand I also want to want to bring note to one very special thing that we do not need to forget about here is we have heroes in our midst we've talked about our law enforcement Personnel our fire our EMS um uh those that are deceased are heroes in my book those that are in the hospital recovering right now are heroes in my book but also the heroes that we need to remember is our faculty and staff here at this school they acted admirably they were heroes in the actions that they took the protocols that this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today so I want to recognize them uh as Heroes because they are and continue with our thoughts and prayers as has been mentioned for the families that were lost here today those that were lost here today those that are recovering in the hospital and obviously those that were affected directly by this tragedy here at the school and all of the community of bar County uh we need to continue have them in our thoughts and prayers one of you tell us T it will be booked tonight I'm not sure the court appearance but it will be within the reasonable amount of time the weapon that was used in this was an AR platform style weapon we're still investigating that aspect of it did he go out of the the gun and come back we' heard some of that from stud we're still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline in uh from the time that he got here to school today until the incident took I mean so often I know people at home we always hear something that the FBI has heard about someone who go one of these events we Happ sing time that we heard a how can we stop well there's a variety of ways in my personal opinion Community involvement what our school system is doing here uh to ensure that uh whether we'll be able to stop it completely one day or not I don't know that's that those are decisions that each individual is making on their own to do this uh but again I go back to what I said earlier about the heroes here that prevented things from being a lot worse today but we've got to take action within our own communities take care of each other uh be aware of our surroundings and what's going on in our community again that's part of a lot of the things that we're trying to clarify within the investigation1 can you just expand on that since they got within minutes could you also expand on why it was a female faculty member walking around looking for the studentes he shot up school YY that I'll let Direct Jos answer that question offic ma'am let's get this question right here and then we'll come back you asked how was a notified I we we discussed today heard earlier law enforcement here within several minutes so we're just curious uh how the notification went through did i1 want hear about it from a student or was it a faulty that made that alerting law enforcement all of our teachers are armed with a uh form of an ID called cix and cix alarms us and alerts the law enforcement office after buttons are pressed on an ID and it alerts us to that there is an active situation at the school for whatever reason and that was pressed and we've had that about a week now we've heard stories of students students while they in the while all this chaos is while going stories about students pmates into to get to safy what do you think that says about these these young folks who are you know very 1 14 15 years old they're looking out it's admirable it's like director Jos said we have Heroes Among Us and those students and teachers that did that today saved a lot of lives this could have been way worse than what we and again the investigation is still trying to file through those that information but those kids are are heroes and brave as well to do that when they hear an active shooter around them talk about let me let me get this one question right here did you have something else van was me okay I was asking why did the school resource officer not look for this K and approach him and why they sent a female faculty member to the room to the algebra room he was in with my daughter looking for him instead of the school resource officer or why the school allowed this boy to come and go from the class all the time he would go and sign up for the the restroom pass leave the class and come back never come back he has been wandering this school with with all due respect ma'am I think your information is incorrect and our investigation is going to lead to what we have and we will be glad to answer your questions once that's done I guess vitim are possibly what can you tell us about the SRO you talked about a lot of Heroes you talked about how one of the SRO encounter the shooter what can you tell us about them who they are how long they've been working here and what they did today both of the SRO that are here at these high schools all of my high schools I have two there both of the SRO to include a third one was here today not for any other reason other than to help and assist today uh they're the true heroes as well they were actively looking they had an alert I guess if you will and when they interjected or when this shooting began they interacted with the shooter Mr Gray and as soon as they made contact with him he gave up immediately can you share these off names not at this time I'd rather not where is the shoter right now you said in custody the shooter is in custody at the bar County Detention Center because he is a juvenile he's being booked in and he will be transported to rydc I'm not aware of that at this time they all of our victims that are at the hospital uh are are going to make it and going to recover well as we've been told and we don't expect any more fatalities at this time last question has there I can't expect to that no tragic when someone prays on kids it's tragic like I said earlier hate is not going to Prevail in our County and Hate's not going to Prevail in our state and pure evil did what happened today that's all I can tell you I want to continue to say that I'm proud of the men and women behind me I'm proud of the women that Stood Beside Me I'm proud of the men and women who protected these kids I'm proud of this staff I'm proud of this community and I just ask for prayers thank you well look we've done a tremendous amount on school safety but today is not the day uh for politics or policy today is the day for an investigation uh to mourn uh these precious Georgians that we have lost to thank the First Responders that went you know into the line of fire the school staff superintendent the principal and others that are just trying to hold this community together that's what we need to be focused on right now uh we also had a tragic loss of a firefighter in Green County earlier today before this event happened with an explosion that killed the life of a first responder that again was running in uh to Danger when many people were trying to run out and that's what the focus needs to be on tonight I would ask everybody to continue to keep this community indeed these victims uh and these Educators and these men and women in law enforcement and your thoughts and prayers thank you thank you Governor just want to thank everyone for their patience and taking the time to cover this um we ask that you um continue to follow the gbi for updates as we said earlier we're going to continue to provide updates it's very important that we get this information out right now we really want to focus on our victims and and you can as I said earlier continue to follow us um as we provide additional updates thank you of those vitim yes I will hey