Suspect in Georgia School Shooting Is Student, 14

The suspect in Wednesday morning's school shooting in Georgia is just 14 years old, officials say. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey told reporters at an afternoon news conference that the teen student will be tried for murder as an adult, NBC News reports. He said the four people killed at Apalachee High School include two students and two teachers. At least nine other people were injured. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said the teen surrendered when he was confronted by a school resource officer. "The shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up, that it would end with an OIS—an officer involved shooting," Smith said.

• CNN reports that law enforcement officials say there was a phone threat to the school earlier in the day. The officials say the caller warned that there would be shooting at five schools and Apalachee would be the first. The high school is in Winder, around 50 miles from Atlanta.

• Student Alexsandra Romero tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a student barged into her class and told everybody to get down. "I wasn't texting my family at first, because I thought it was just a drill," Romero says. She says students had been trained on what to do in an active-shooter situation. "I can just remember my hands were shaking," she says. "I felt bad because everybody was crying, everybody was trying to find their siblings."
• In a statement, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said: "This is a day every parent dreads, and Georgians everywhere will hug their children tighter this evening because of this painful event."

• At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Vice President Kamala Harris said: "This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies, and it's just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive." NBC News reports that Donald Trump also condemned the shooting, saying in a Truth Social post: "These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster."
• "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," President Biden said in a statement, per ABC News. "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."

(More school shooting stories.)