Could Police Have Done More to Prevent Georgia School Shooting?

Academics are divided on whether law enforcement could have done more to prevent Wednesday’s shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia, which left four people dead and another nine injured.
Police have charged 14-year-old Colt Gray with four counts of felony murder related to the shooting, and he is expected to be tried as an adult. His father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, has also been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Colin Gray “knowingly allowed his son … to possess a gun,” which Colt is accused of using in the shooting.
The four people killed in the shooting are Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, two 14-year-old students, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie. Authorities said the attack was carried out with an AR-style platform rifle. According to the FBI, in 2023 Colt and his father were interviewed by sheriff’s deputies following anonymous online threats regarding a school shooting, which officials linked to the then-13-year-old boy.
Colt denied he had made the threats, the FBI said, adding, “At that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels.” Officials “alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
Speaking to Newsweek, Edward Taylor, an expert in adolescent mental health at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, who has covered school shootings, said the police should have taken “additional assertive steps” after Colt came to their attention in 2023.
He said: “At another point in time, before school shootings became part of the American identity, we could say that the police fulfilled their responsibility by interviewing the adolescent and father. However, in modern United States culture, it would be helpful for police investigators to take additional assertive steps.
“While the initial evidence did not provide a pathway for legal action, the investigators could have asked the father for permission to take possession of and analyze the adolescent’s computer and phone. They could also have asked if the family would allow the investigators to see how the weapons and ammunition were secured.”
Taylor added that while “we cannot determine the father’s response to such a request,” how he “addressed the request may have triggered a more complete inquiry.”
“It would have also been helpful if a mental health resource officer had interviewed the youth and arranged for an immediate violence risk assessment with a forensic psychologist,” the academic said, adding: “Nonetheless, we must keep in mind that it is impossible to know whether any of these steps would have prevented the murder and injury of innocent people. However, we do know that better violence prevention research, parent information and resources, investigation protocols, community mental health outreach, and school-supportive staff are needed.”
Newsweek contacted the Georgia Department of Public Safety, which has oversight over law enforcement in the state, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for comment on Saturday via telephone and email, respectively, outside regular office hours.
Michael D. White, a professor of criminology at Arizona State University, said he didn’t think the police could reasonably have been expected to do more in 2023 given their available resources.
In an interview with Newsweek, he said: “I do not believe the police could have done any more to prevent this shooting. There are a few things at play. First, they did investigate the initial threat, and as they said, there was no probable cause to make an arrest. Second, my recollection is that this initial investigation was more than a year ago. Police do not have the resources to continually check in with every potential threat they investigate week after week, month after month. Nor do they have the authority or resources to conduct any sort of long-term surveillance.
“Third, the suspect is a juvenile. There is nothing the police could do to counter the horrifically bad parenting decision to give this child a weapon like that. The district attorney has decided that the father has culpability for this terrible crime, and I agree.”
Ellen deLara, an expert in school shootings at Syracuse University, said law enforcement were limited in what they could do in 2023 because of legal restrictions.
She told Newsweek: “It is very difficult to say in hindsight that there were police or security failings. In the initial part of the case, the police may have had to take the dad’s word based on Georgia laws. I am not sure what they might be. But the parents are the guardians, so categorically they have at least some responsibility for the actions of their child if they have weapons in the house—and specifically if he was given an AR weapon for Christmas.”
According to an unconfirmed CNN report, citing law enforcement sources, Colin Gray said he gave his son the AR-style rifle as a Christmas present in December 2023.
DeLara continued: “It is difficult to interview adolescents. Someone with specific training—and understanding of the development and impulsivity of adolescents—is the kind of person who would need to do a full and thorough evaluation of someone suspected of committing harm on this level.”
Margaret Price, an associate professor at Ohio State University who has written about mental health in education, said Wednesday’s shooting raised broader questions, including about the availability of firearms in America.
“The usual assumption is that a school shooting happens because one person was mentally ill,” she said. “But in fact, research shows that mental illness has only the weakest connection to the tendency to be violent. The real causes of violence, including school shootings, are far more complex and involve factors like the sheer number of firearms available in the U.S.”