At least four people, including two students, have been killed and nine others were injured when a fellow student opened fire in a high school in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, CNN reported.
The suspected gunman is in custody and was identified as 14-year-old Colt Cray, a student of Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, about an hour outside of Atlanta.
Two of those killed were students and two were teachers. Law enforcement agencies are still investigating the shooting and the motive behind it.
While speaking to CNN, a junior at Apalachee High School, Lyela Sayarath, stated that she was sitting next to suspected gunman Colt Gray moments before the deadly shooting occurred on Wednesday.
She said Colt left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 am local time. Lyela thought Colt was going to the bathroom, but he didn’t take a pass, so she assumed he was skipping class, she said.
Towards the end of her algebra class, Lyela said someone over the loudspeaker told her teacher to check her email.
Shortly after, Colt returned to the classroom outside of the shut door, which Lyela said locks automatically. She said a girl in the class went to open the door for him, but then jumped backwards after presumedly seeing that he had a gun.
“I guess he saw we weren’t going to let him in. And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open so I think he just started shooting in the classroom,” Lyela told CNN.
Lyela said the students in her classroom hid behind desks, as they heard the gunshots, which she described as “just one after another.”
“When we heard it, most people just dropped to the floor and kind of crawled in an area like piled on top of each other,” she said. “The teacher turned off the lights, but we all just kind of piled together. And like I pushed desks in front of us.”
Lyela said her friend was in the classroom next to her, where the shooting was taking place.
“He was pretty shaken up,” she said of her friend. “He saw somebody get shot. He had blood on him. He was kinda limping. He looked horrified.”
Lyela described Colt as quiet and shy, and would only respond with single-word answers when they worked as a group on projects together.
The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.
