ATLANTA, Ga. — The life-without-parole sentence for the teenager who carried out the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting will stand after the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to take up his appeal.
The justices made the decision earlier in October, according to the court website, rejecting his bid for a new trial. The move closes off the most direct route for challenging the sentence in the state courts.
He was a 14-year-old freshman when he opened fire at the school in Winder on Sept. 4, 2024, killing two students and two teachers and wounding nine more people. He entered a non-negotiated guilty plea to all 55 counts and was sentenced in July by Judge Nicholas Primm. He was 16 at the time of sentencing.
At that hearing, prosecutors from the Barrow County district attorney office argued the shooting was planned well in advance rather than the product of an emotional collapse. They pointed to a notebook holding drawings of a targeted classroom and the school building, a checklist for the attack, and recorded jail calls they said revealed a fixation on becoming known as a school shooter.
His lawyers had asked for life with a chance at parole, citing his youth, his mental health and a troubled home life, and argued that a teenager could still change. The judge chose the harsher sentence after hearing from victims families, survivors, teachers and members of the community.
The case drew attention well beyond Barrow County because it put one of the stiffest punishments in Georgia law on someone who was a young teenager when he committed the crimes.
Section: More Atlanta GA crime news
Filed under: Atlanta GA Crime News
