A 14-year-old boy shoots at a school in the US state of Georgia and kills several people. Now investigators are also taking action against his father. They believe he is partly to blame.
Washington/Winder – In the US state of Georgia, police have arrested the father of a 14-year-old who killed at least four people at a school. The shooter’s 54-year-old father is charged with manslaughter, among other things, because he “knowingly allowed his son to possess a weapon,” said Chris Hosey of the local investigation department in Georgia. The perpetrator himself must answer for murder. The investigators had previously announced that the 14-year-old would be treated like an adult in the prosecution.
A gun as a Christmas present?
US television station CNN reported, citing police sources, that the boy’s father himself told investigators that he had given his son the weapon – an AR-15 assault rifle – for Christmas last December. When asked, Hosey did not comment on whether the man had given his son the weapon. The investigator also did not go into detail about the circumstances of the arrest.
The teenager opened fire on Wednesday at a school in the town of Winder near Atlanta. According to police, two 14-year-old students and two teachers were among the dead. Nine other people were injured in the attack. Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said all nine were on the mend and would make a full recovery. Some are still in the hospital, others have already been released.
The Shooter
According to investigators, the shooter was a teenager who attended Apalachee High School. A school police officer arrested the 14-year-old. The teenager apparently feared that there might be a shootout, lay down on the ground and gave up. The police have not yet released any information about a possible motive. However, the crime was apparently already hinted at in advance.
The youth is no stranger to the police. According to the FBI, there were already several anonymous tips about a possible attack last year. Specifically, these were online threats that contained photos of weapons and announced a gun attack at a school, they said. The suspected shooter and his father were then questioned. The then 13-year-old denied having threatened an attack. The local schools were alerted to continue monitoring the youth. At that time, however, there were “no credible grounds for an arrest or for further law enforcement action.”
When parents are also accused
The allegations against the shooter’s father are reminiscent of another recent case. In April, parents of a teenager who carried out a massacre at a school were sentenced to prison for the first time in the United States for negligent homicide. The case concerned a teenager who shot and killed four students at a school in the US state of Michigan in 2021. His mother and father were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
It was the first time in the United States that parents of a shooter were convicted of personal responsibility for such a crime. The murder weapon was a gift from the parents to their then 15-year-old son, who used it to commit the murders shortly afterwards.
Gun violence continues to shake the USA
In the USA, fatal shootings are part of everyday life. Firearms are readily available in the USA and are in large circulation. Larger attacks of this kind, for example in schools, supermarkets, nightclubs or at large events, regularly lead to discussions about tightening gun laws – so far without any success. A substantial tightening of gun laws in the USA has been prevented by Republicans for years.
Democratic President Joe Biden once again called for a ban on assault rifles and stricter regulations on the storage of weapons. He himself is a gun owner and is in favor of the right to own weapons, the 81-year-old said at an appearance in the state of Wisconsin. But the country needs stricter laws. Nobody needs assault rifles for private use, and adults must keep their weapons safe so that their children cannot access them. Biden complained that more children in the USA die from gunshots than from any other cause, such as illness or accidents.
For the first time in 2020, firearm injuries were the number one cause of death for children and young people in the USA, ahead of traffic accidents. dpa
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