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.
Even as gun violence on K-12 campuses has spiked over the past seven years, the deadliest campus killers have remained older, typically in their late teens. That leaves Colt Gray, the Apalachee student accused of opening fire with an AR-15-style rifle, in an exceedingly small group.
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.