WINDER, Ga. — This time it happened on a campus here.
On Georgia soil.
On the 23rd day of the school year at Apalachee High.
On the southwest side of the city of Winder — 37.1 miles east-northeast across Stone Mountain from the grounds of our state capitol.
This time, wishful thinking, hopeful sighs of, “Thank goodness it didn’t happen here,” rang hollow and useless.
This time, the rifle blasts hit home, and when they did an 11th-grader at Apalachee High, a girl named Lexi Gravitt, huddled in a classroom.
She did what anyone these days might do in a flash moment of life-threatened panic.
She tapped out a text message to her mother: “I think someone is shooting in the hall.”
It was 10:23 a.m. Wednesday. Second period. Someone was shooting.
Two students and a pair of math teachers lay dead. Nine more people, eight students and a teacher, were injured.
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Wednesday’s violence was over in a matter of minutes. For the victims’ families, it will last forever.
More than 72 hours later, grieving students, parents and teachers are still trying to grasp what happened and why. Investigators continue piecing together details in hopes of unearthing a clearer picture of what might have compelled the 14-year-old boy allegedly responsible for the massacre to open fire. The boy’s father also has been jailed.
In the wake of the bloodshed, the deadliest in state history, Barrow County’s schools closed for the week. This weekend, worshippers across the region will congregate in churches to pay their respects and to reflect. The district has yet to say when Apalachee High School will reopen.
There, too, is another question that remains unanswered: Will anything change when it comes to protecting students from gun violence? Mass shootings at schools are not common, but most everyone agrees they happen too often.
