A 14-year-old stu­dent opened fire at a Geor­gia high school and killed four peo­ple on Wednes­day, au­thor­i­ties said, send­ing stu­dents scram­bling for shel­ter in their class­rooms — and even­tu­al­ly to the foot­ball sta­di­um — as of­fi­cers swarmed the cam­pus and par­ents raced to find out if their chil­dren were safe.

The dead were iden­ti­fied as two stu­dents and two teach­ers at Apalachee High School in Winder, about an hour’s dri­ve from At­lanta. At least nine oth­er peo­ple were tak­en to hos­pi­tals with in­juries.

The words “hard lock­down” ap­peared on a screen in ju­nior Lay­la Fer­rell’s health class and lights be­gan flash­ing. She and her fright­ened class­mates piled desks and chairs in front of the door to cre­ate a bar­ri­cade, she re­called.

Sopho­more Kaylee Ab­n­er was in geom­e­try class when she heard the gun­shots. She and her class­mates ducked be­hind their teacher’s desk, and then the teacher be­gan flip­ping the desk in an at­tempt to bar­ri­cade the class­room door, Ab­n­er said. A class­mate be­side her was pray­ing, and she held his hand while they all wait­ed for po­lice.

Af­ter stu­dents poured in­to the foot­ball sta­di­um, Ab­n­er saw teach­ers who had tak­en off their shirts to help treat gun­shot wounds.

Two school re­source of­fi­cers en­coun­tered the shoot­er with­in min­utes af­ter a re­port of shots fired went out, Geor­gia Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion Di­rec­tor Chris Hosey said. The sus­pect, a stu­dent at the school, im­me­di­ate­ly sur­ren­dered and was tak­en in­to cus­tody. He is be­ing charged as an adult with mur­der.

Au­thor­i­ties were still look­ing in­to how the sus­pect ob­tained the gun used in the shoot­ing and got it in­to the school in Bar­row Coun­ty, about 50 miles (80 kilo­me­tres) north­east of At­lanta.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was still “very ac­tive,” Hosey said, with lots of in­ter­views and crime scene work yet to be done.

Bar­row Coun­ty Sher­iff Jud Smith choked up as he be­gan to speak dur­ing the news con­fer­ence. He said he was born and raised in the com­mu­ni­ty and his kids are in the school sys­tem.

“My heart hurts for these kids. My heart hurts for our com­mu­ni­ty,” he said. “But I want to make it very clear that hate will not pre­vail in this coun­ty. I want that to be very clear and known. Love will pre­vail over what hap­pened to­day.”

It was the lat­est among dozens of school shoot­ings across the U.S. in re­cent years, in­clud­ing es­pe­cial­ly dead­ly ones in New­town, Con­necti­cut, Park­land, Flori­da, and Uvalde, Texas. The class­room killings have set off fer­vent de­bates about gun con­trol and frayed the nerves of par­ents whose chil­dren are grow­ing up ac­cus­tomed to ac­tive shoot­er drills in class­rooms. But they have done lit­tle to move the nee­dle on na­tion­al gun laws.

Be­fore Wednes­day, there had been 29 mass killings in the U.S. so far this year, ac­cord­ing to a data­base main­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press and USA To­day in part­ner­ship with North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. At least 127 peo­ple have died in those killings, which are de­fined as in­ci­dents in which four or more peo­ple die with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od, not in­clud­ing the killer — the same de­f­i­n­i­tion used by the FBI.

Last year end­ed with 217 deaths from 42 mass killings, mak­ing 2023 one of the dead­liest years on record for such shoot­ings in the coun­try.

On Wednes­day in Geor­gia, sopho­more foot­ball play­er Ja­cob King said he had dozed off in his world his­to­ry class af­ter a morn­ing prac­tice when he heard about 10 gun­shots.

King said he didn’t be­lieve the shoot­ing was re­al un­til he heard an of­fi­cer yelling at some­one to put down their gun. When his class was led out, he saw of­fi­cers shield­ing what ap­peared to be an in­jured stu­dent.

Ash­ley Enoh was at home in the morn­ing when she got a text from her broth­er, a se­nior at Apalachee High: “Just so you know, I love you.”

When Erin Clark, 42, re­ceived a text from her son Ethan, a se­nior, say­ing there was an ac­tive shoot­er, she rushed from her job at the Ama­zon ware­house to the school. The two texted “I love you,” and Clark said she prayed for her him as she drove.

With the main road to the school blocked, she parked and ran with oth­er par­ents. They were di­rect­ed to the foot­ball field, and amid the chaos, Clark found Ethan sit­ting on the bleach­ers.

Clark said her son was writ­ing an es­say in class when he first heard gun­fire. He worked with his class­mates to bar­ri­cade the door and hide.

“I’m so proud of him for do­ing that,” she said. “He was so brave.”

“It makes me scared to send him back,” Clark said. “I don’t know what I’m go­ing to do.”

Traf­fic go­ing to the school was backed up for more than a mile as par­ents tried to get to their chil­dren. Bar­row Coun­ty schools will be closed for the rest of the week as they co­op­er­ate with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but grief coun­selling will be avail­able.

“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,” Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris said dur­ing a cam­paign stop in New Hamp­shire.

In a mes­sage post­ed to so­cial me­dia, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said: “These cher­ished chil­dren were tak­en from us far too soon by a sick and de­ranged mon­ster.”

Geor­gia Gov. Bri­an Kemp said in a state­ment: “This is a day every par­ent dreads, and Geor­gians every­where will hug their chil­dren tighter this evening be­cause of this painful event.”

The FBI’s At­lanta of­fice said its agents were at the school “co­or­di­nat­ing with and sup­port­ing lo­cal law en­force­ment.”

Apalachee High School has about 1,900 stu­dents, ac­cord­ing to records from Geor­gia ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials. It be­came Bar­row Coun­ty’s sec­ond largest pub­lic high school when it opened in 2000, ac­cord­ing to the Bar­row Coun­ty School Sys­tem. It’s named af­ter the Apalachee Riv­er on the south­ern edge of Bar­row Coun­ty.

The shoot­ing had re­ver­ber­a­tions in At­lanta, where May­or An­dre Dick­ens said pa­trols of schools were beefed up.

In Winder, Ab­n­er said that when she goes home Wednes­day night, she hopes to avoid think­ing about those ter­ri­fy­ing mo­ments in her geom­e­try class.

“I’ll prob­a­bly not think about it, even though it hap­pened,” she said. “Just think hap­py thoughts, don’t think about it any­more.”

Sopho­more Shan­tal San­vee, who was in a class­room near the gun­shots, said “I saw, like, a whole lot of blood. And it was just, it was just hor­ri­ble.”

“I don’t think I want to be here for like a long time now,” she added.

As an of­fi­cer led stu­dents to­wards the sta­di­um, fresh­man Michelle Mon­ca­da was in tears. Peo­ple she knew had been shot, and she saw one friend on the floor who had been grazed by a bul­let.

“It doesn’t feel re­al,” Mon­ca­da said. —WINDER, Ga. (AP)

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Sto­ry by JEFF AMY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. AP jour­nal­ists Sharon John­son and Mike Stew­art in Winder; Beat­rice Dupuy in New York; Russ Bynum in Sa­van­nah, Geor­gia; and Char­lotte Kra­mon, Kate Brum­back and Jeff Mar­tin in At­lanta con­tributed.