What can Utah learn from recent school shooting in Georgia?

Once again, there are lessons to unpack in the wake of a deadly school shooting.
Earlier this week, the Utah Legislature’s School Security Task Force reviewed a school shooting on Sept. 4 in Winder, Georgia, that killed two students and two teachers. Nine others were hospitalized after they were allegedly shot by a 14-year-old student who also attended Apalachee High School.
Task force chairman Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, said while there is some controversy over a new Utah law that will require armed school guardians in every public school, the presence of armed, trained school resource officers in Apalachee High School halted the school shooting before more people were injured or killed.
The suspect was taken into custody without the officers having to fire their weapons.
“That almost never happens, never. I can’t even think of another scenario where it’s happened. I’m glad the SRO didn’t have to pull the trigger for that kid to stop. That’s miraculous on its own, somehow. It ended because of that SRO,” said Wilcox.
“That’s awesome. That’s the best case scenario for us in such a disaster.”
“Alyssa’s Law” may have also helped to keep students and staff safe during the mass shooting, Wilcox said.
“Alyssa’s Law” legislation that has been adopted by a number of states, including Utah. It requires public schools to have silent panic alarms that connect directly to law enforcement in the event of an emergency. The law is named after Alyssa Alhadeff, one of 17 people killed during the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The goal of the law is to improve school safety and response times.
While systems and processes help to enhance school safety, the alleged shooter used a semiautomatic assault rifle purchased for him by his father.
In 2023, law enforcement officers in Georgia interviewed the then 13-year-old boy about online posts threatening a school shooting, but investigators didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest. That same boy opened fire at his high school on Sept. 4, officials said.
“The Georgia case is particularly egregious. The parent purchased the firearm after the FBI interview. So, yeah, for the kid. I don’t even know what to say,” Wilcox said.
Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, said media reports indicate six minutes elapsed between the first gunshots and officers taking the shooter into custody, “which emphasizes the critical need for intelligence gathering before to try to head it off, and then for the quick, quick response.”
The teen’s mother called the school prior to the shooting to warn officials, which shows as in most school shootings, there is “leakage” in advance of a shooting or other mass casualty event. “There’s somebody that knows,” he said.
The teen faces four adult counts of felony murder charges while his father faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Eliason said school shooters using family members’ weapons or using guns given to them by family members “is a typical theme.”
In Utah, the No. 1 cause of death for children is suicide. The most common method used is a firearm “and the most frequently obtained source of those firearms is parents,” he said.
Parents who do not to store their weapons securely or risk criminal and civil penalties if the weapons are used in the commission of crimes.
In April, parents of a school shooter in Michigan were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison after they were convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The pair was charged for not securing the newly purchased gun at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health.
Their 15-year-old son used the gun to kill four students at Oxford High School in 2021.
At a bare minimum, there needs to be public education campaigns about proper storage of firearms “that every group can get behind. I think we need to explore how can we enhance that in other ways? Again, it (the Georgia school shooting) just followed the typical pattern. If he couldn’t have gotten access, then we wouldn’t have been talking about this,” Eliason said.
Utah’s school safety bill, HB84, passed by lawmakers earlier this year, states that in the absence of a school resource officer or security guard, a school employee can volunteer to be an armed guardian to respond during an emergency.
Schools have until the end of the year to conduct needs assessments to determine their needs and deficiencies regarding appropriate school safety personnel. The law calls for districts or charter schools to have either a school resource officer, a volunteer school guardian or an armed school security guard in their schools.