A 14-year-old boy killed two fellow students and two teachers and wounded nine others in a shooting at a Georgia high school on Wednesday, jolting the United States with the first mass campus shooting since the start of the school year.

The suspect, who had been interviewed by law enforcement last year over online threats about committing a school shooting, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, investigators said, Reuters reported.

He was identified as Colt Gray, 14, and will be charged and tried as an adult, Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told a press conference.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said the gunman, armed with an “AR platform style weapon,” or semiautomatic rifle, was quickly confronted by deputies assigned to the school and that the suspect immediately got on the ground and surrendered.

Once under arrest the suspect was speaking with investigators, who believe he was acting alone, but they declined to say if they knew what motivated him.

Officials identified those killed as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. All nine of those hospitalized were expected to recover, Smith told reporters.

“Pure evil did what happened today,” Smith said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation later issued a statement revealing that it had investigated online threats to commit a school shooting in 2023 and local law enforcement interviewed a 13-year-old subject and his father in nearby Jackson County. The statement did not identify the teen, but Georgia officials said the statement was in connection to the subject in custody.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject,” the FBI said, adding that there was no probable cause to make an arrest.

The shooting revived both the national debate about gun control and the outpouring of grief that follows in a country where such outbursts occur with some regularity.

People in Winder, a city of 18,000 some 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Atlanta, gathered in a park for a prayer vigil later Wednesday night.

Some leaned on each other or bowed their heads in prayer, while others lit candles to honor the dead.

“We are all hurting. Because when something affects one of us it affects us all,” said Power Evans, a city councilman who addressed the gathering. “I know that here tonight, all of are going to come together. We’re going to love on one another. … We’re all family. We’re all neighbors.”

BIDEN CALLS FOR GUN SAFETY LEGISLATION

The White House said in a statement that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the shooting “and his administration will continue coordinating with federal, state, and local officials as we receive more information.”

“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,” Biden said in a statement, calling on Republicans to work with Democrats to pass “common-sense gun safety legislation.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee for president, called the shooting a “senseless tragedy.”

“We’ve gotta stop it. We have to end this epidemic of gun violence,” Harris said at the start of a campaign event in New Hampshire.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, wrote on social media that “Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA. These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”

Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, asked at a press conference what could be done to prevent shootings, said, “Today is not the day for politics or policy. Today is the day for an investigation, to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost.”

The shooting was the first “planned attack” at a school this fall, said David Riedman, who runs the K-12 School Shooting Database. Apalachee students returned to school last month; many other students in the U.S. are returning this week.

The U.S. has seen hundreds of shootings inside schools and colleges in the past two decades, with the deadliest resulting in over 30 deaths at Virginia Tech in 2007. The carnage has intensified the pitched debate over gun laws and the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which enshrines the right “to keep and bear arms.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, responding to a question about the potential delivery of long-range U.S. missiles to Ukraine, warned the United States on Wednesday not to joke about Russia’s “red lines”, Reuters reported.

Lavrov said the U.S. was losing sight of the sense of mutual deterrence that had underpinned the balance of security between Moscow and Washington since the Cold War, and that this was dangerous.

He was commenting on a Reuters report that the U.S. is close to an agreement to supply Ukraine with long-range JASSM cruise missiles that could reach deep inside Russia – for which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been lobbying.

“I won’t be surprised by anything – the Americans have already crossed the threshold they set for themselves. They are being egged on, and Zelenskiy of course sees this and takes advantage of it,” Lavrov told a Russian TV interviewer.

“But they should understand – they are joking about our red lines here. They shouldn’t joke about our red lines.”

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West since launching what he called his “special military operation” in Ukraine in 2022 not to try to thwart Russia, which has the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear weapons, read the report.

But Washington and its allies have increased military aid to Ukraine, including by providing tanks, advanced missiles and F-16 fighter jets.

That has prompted some Western politicians to suggest Putin’s nuclear rhetoric is a bluff and that the U.S. and NATO should go all-out to help Ukraine win the war. Zelenskiy has said Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, launched on Aug. 6, makes a mockery of Putin’s red lines.

Lavrov said Washington knew where these limits lay but was wrong if it believed the consequences of any escalation of the war in Ukraine would be suffered mainly by Europe.

“They have a genetic conviction that no one will touch them,” Lavrov said. This, he said, undermined all the principles that had underpinned strategic stability with Washington since Soviet times.

“This feeling of mutual deterrence – for some reason they are starting to lose it. This is dangerous,” he said.

Lavrov alluded to remarks by White House national security adviser John Kirby, who said in June that President Joe Biden had repeatedly said Washington was not looking for “World War Three, opens new tab”.

Kirby said a major escalation of the Ukraine war could have “disastrous consequences, potentially, across the European continent” and would not be good for U.S. interests, Reuters reported.

It was the second time in just over a week that Lavrov has cautioned the U.S. that a third world war would not be confined to Europe.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday Russia was making changes to its nuclear doctrine because Washington and its allies were threatening Russia by escalating the war in Ukraine and riding roughshod over what it called Moscow’s legitimate security interests.

It has not said how it plans to update the policy document setting out the circumstances in which it might use a nuclear weapon, or when the changes will take effect.

Russia launched missiles and drones on Kyiv and the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, not far from the border with NATO-member Poland, Ukraine’s military said on Wednesday.

This comes just a day after Russia hit a military institute in Ukraine’s central town of Poltava with two ballistic missiles in the war’s deadliest single attack this year, killing 50 and wounding hundreds more.

On Wednesday, Reuters witnesses heard several blasts on the outskirts of Kyiv and Lviv in what sounded like air defence systems in operation. Ukraine’s military officials said its defence units were engaged in repelling the attacks.

“Yes, it’s very loud,” Lviv Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on the Telegram messaging app.

Residential buildings have been damaged in the city of Lviv, which is the administrative centre of the broader region, Kozytskyi added.

Neighbouring Poland activated aircraft on Wednesday for the third time in eight days to ensure the safety of Polish airspace.

“This is another very busy night for the entire air defence system in Poland due to the observed activity of the long-range aviation of the Russian Federation carrying out strikes,” the Command said on X.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones in the past 10 days in what some Russian military bloggers say is Moscow’s response to Kyiv’s recent incursion into Russian territory.

Russia is yet to comment on the attacks on Poltava and Wednesday strikes on Lviv and Kyiv. Moscow has often said that its strikes target Ukraine’s military, energy and transport infrastructure, not civilians.

The whole of Ukraine was under air raid alerts since about 0100 GMT on Wednesday, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram.

It also issued threat warnings of fresh attacks on the Lviv region, involving missiles. – Reuters