Upon the request of local authorities, the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (BG-RRT) has deployed its chaplains to Winder, Georgia, following the mass shooting earlier this week at Apalachee High School.
The school shooting was the deadliest of its kind in 2024, with four individuals killed in the attack. Authorities identified the victims as Christian Angulo (14), Mason Schermerhorn (14), Richard Aspinwall (39), and Christina Irimie (52). Nine others were wounded in the shooting.
“News reports say that four people died and nine were hospitalized in a shooting at Apalachee High School in north central Georgia, near Atlanta,” Franklin Graham detailed on social media. “Join me in praying especially for those who lost loved ones and for those injured in this senseless act of evil. May God’s hand of comfort be on them.”
“Our Billy Graham Rapid Response Team will be there in Georgia to offer prayer and spiritual support to those impacted by this tragedy in the difficult days ahead,” Graham announced.
The shooter is believed to be 14-year-old Colt Gray, who appeared in court on Friday. Gray is being charged as an adult and faces a maximum sentence of penalty of life in prison without parole. His father, Colin Gray, was also arrested and stood in court today with separate charges of “two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children,” according to Fox News.
Josh Holland, international director of BG-RRT, stated, “As a father, my heart breaks for the students, teachers, and families. In this dark hour, our chaplains are coming alongside the hurting and broken to offer emotional and spiritual care—the hope and comfort of Jesus Christ.”
With school shootings becoming all too commonplace in the United States, especially over the last decade, BG-RRT has responded to these tragedies by bringing comfort, prayer, and the Gospel to those in the communities mourning the tragic loss of life.
Following the school shooting at a Nashville Christian school in March of 2023, which resulted in the deaths of three children and three teachers, Pastor Jack Hibbs referred to mass shootings targeting children as a “commentary on the soul of America,” and urged prayer for the nation.
“It is clear that America’s soul is sin-sick,” he wrote at the time. “The Gospel has been rejected by our government, the Word of God has been rejected by ‘woke’ pastors and churches, and our nation has loosed itself from the moorings of God and His truth. The Bible tells us that God’s grace is what protects us and sustains us, and without His protection, we have no safety whatsoever. God has warned us that if we push Him away, we leave ourselves unprotected and vulnerable to the evils of the human heart and man’s fallen nature.”
“The only answer to what’s happening in our nation is not more laws, and certainly not more gun control because laws cannot change the human heart,” Hibbs underscored. “Only Jesus Christ can do that.”
