The 14-year-old boy accused of killing two students and a pair of teachers at Georgia’s Apalachee High on Wednesday would be the youngest mass school shooter in a quarter-century, according to a Washington Post analysis.
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In 1998, two boys in Arkansas, 11 and 13, took aim outside their middle school, killing five. While children Gray’s age, or younger, have committed roughly 15 percent of the school shootings in the time after that, none since the pair in Arkansas had taken more than a single life.
In Georgia, the accused shooter’s youth — and, despite it, his apparent ability to obtain and fire the weapon of choice for many older mass killers — will likely amplify the polarized national debate over gun laws that have allowed for the proliferation of semiautomatic rifles since a ban on many of them expired two decades ago.
As in past incidents involving young shooters, experts said, the fallout from this case will center largely on how an underage teenager accessed a weapon and ammunition that federal law would have prohibited him from buying, how an armed child gained access to a supposedly secure school building and how, or if, early intervention might have prevented the violence.
“It’s just so shockingly young,” said Jillian Peterson, a forensic psychologist who has extensively studied mass shooters.
“To get the weapon, to get entry into the school, to cover it up. I mean, it’s such a horrific act to do, it takes a level of, I don’t know what it is — disconnect, motivation, something to actually go and murder that many people,” Peterson added. “A 14-year-old I still think of as … very childlike, whereas this act feels very disconnected from that.”
School shootings account for a small fraction of the overall number of mass killings tracked by The Post in recent decades and defined as attacks that take four or more lives. Yet, they’ve taken on a singular significance in American culture since the Columbine High massacre in 1999, with tens of millions of children experiencing active-shooter drills, security lockdowns and a perpetual fear that a sudden burst of violence could someday visit their classrooms.
Both Peterson’s analysis of mass shooting trends and The Post’s review of its school shooting data suggest that Gray’s youth does not portend a broader shift. The median age of school shooters is, and long has been, 16. In 2021, when students started returning to classes after the pandemic shutdowns were lifted, that figure briefly dipped to 15 before ticking back up.
It also struck Peterson that, according to Gray’s aunt, he was a freshman. That meant, in another oddity, he had only attended his high school for a month before allegedly attacking it.
“That’s actually the thing that’s throwing me off about this one, is how new he was,” she said. “Typically, you need a year or two to get angry at a school and to blame them.”
In at least one way, however, Gray mirrors dozens of other shooters: There had been early signs of potential trouble.
In May 2023, the FBI announced Wednesday evening, it received several anonymous tips about someone threatening online to shoot up a school. The FBI traced those comments, which included photos of firearms, to Georgia and notified the local sheriff’s office.
Its investigators identified Gray, then 13, as a “possible subject.”
“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” the FBI said in its statement. “The subject denied making the threats online.”
The sheriff’s office alerted local schools, but without probable cause, the FBI said, law enforcement dropped its inquiry.
Gray’s aunt, Annie Brown, told The Post that, in recent months, the teen had been “begging” the adults around him for mental health support.
“There are always warning signs,” Peterson said, noting that more than 90 percent of school mass shooters tell someone else, typically classmates, about their plans.
