Students at Apalachee High School in Georgia still have many questions to answer after a shooting at their school left four people dead.
• Also read: Four dead after shooting at high school near Atlanta, suspect arrested
A 14-year-old suspect was arrested by police who will try to shed light on his motives. He will be “tried and prosecuted as an adult,” according to authorities.
“I remember seeing him outside the door,” Leylah, 16, told CNN in an interview. The teenager was in the same class as the suspect. She said she saw the young man leave the building a few minutes before trying to get back in.
“(A student) almost let him in. She backed away when he got to the door. (The shooter) turned around and that’s when we heard the first shots,” the teenager continued. She believes her classmate saw that the suspect was armed.
Another student who was at the school said her teachers overturned desks and barricaded the door as soon as the first shots were fired.
“I was so scared. I didn’t understand what was happening. I texted my mother. I also took the opportunity to write to my friends to make sure they were okay,” she recalls.
“I was convinced I was going to die. I knew it wasn’t a practice when I heard the alarm,” says one teenager. “I prayed. I closed my eyes to try to stay calm.”
Parents who came to welcome their children believe that more needs to be done to identify young people at risk.
“We have to unpack these things. As parents, it’s our responsibility,” one mother pleads.
“For me, mental health is a big issue. We have kids on social media and we don’t know what they’re doing. Are they being bullied? What are people saying to them?” laments another woman.
Apalachee High School is closed through the weekend.
Weapons again
This new shooting, which cost the lives of two students and two teachers, brings back to the agenda the debate on gun control in the United States.
“We cannot allow this to become the norm,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris vowed in a campaign speech to “end this epidemic of gun violence in our country, once and for all.”
His Republican rival Donald Trump condemned the shooter’s actions, calling him a “sick and deranged monster.”
The year 2023 was a record year for mass shootings in the United States, with 656 shootings, including 40 mass shootings, resulting in a total of 48,000 deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
With information from AFP
