Officials said a Georgia shooting suspect displayed interest in Parkland mass shooting, according to authorities.

He was charged as an adult. Winder is located in Barrow County about 60 miles northeast of Atlanta. A vigil will take place Wednesday for Apalachee High School student Avery Harris who had gone missing. As per investigative documents, in May 2023 the FBI received information from Discord users regarding online threats to commit a shooting at a middle school. The FBI traced a Discord account associated with an individual matching up with the father of the teen enrolled at Jefferson Middle School and forwarded the investigation. Jackson County sheriffs interviewed both parties involved; their father denied knowing about Discord or playing video games at all. The teenager informed the sheriff’s office that he previously owned and had deleted a Discord account. According to an investigative report, this account was traced to multiple IP addresses located both in Buffalo, New York, as well as Georgia cities such as Fort Valley and Statesboro – two places the teen had never lived – where Fort Valley and Statesboro are. Furthermore, its user name in Russian translated directly to that of an active school shooter. According to a report, neither father or son spoke Russian, nor were active on Discord at the time of making threats, having had his account compromised multiple times “and fearing someone would use his information for unlawful means,” per report. A law enforcement official advised both fathers that neither could verify information from FBI nor verify whether any family member were behind any account that made the threats on Discord. Jackson County authorities then “alerted local schools for continued monitoring” according to an FBI statement, according to which Barrow County schools may or may not have known about or “monitored” this subject prior to when she began attending there last month; Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith noted Thursday that she recently registered there two weeks prior. On Wednesday, Smith had his second day teaching full time at Apalachee High School and first day overall of working there. Smith told NBC News on Thursday, shortly after learning of last year’s investigation, his office learned about it two hours post shooting on Wednesday evening. Smith expressed confidence that all previous tips had been handled appropriately by FBI and local law enforcement authorities. Smith stated, “Local authorities went to his house, interviewed both he and his father separately before conducting their due diligence and discovering there was no appropriate basis” to arrest him. All individuals have civil rights; in this situation none committed an illegal act. At first, his comment seemed innocuous enough, yet later it proved otherwise. Yet 15-year-old football player Isaiah Hooks found it hard to accept that some authorities knew about and monitored their young student. “It is unbearably heartbreaking to consider, to accept that someone with whom the FBI were familiar could do such damage when my coach and classmates and friends who had been targeted were right across from where I sat in that classroom,” Hooks lamented. “That individual should never have even been allowed near a school; their threats should have been noted on his transcript or somewhere similar so this event wouldn’t occur – since they knew about his potential threat of doing this kind of violence against innocent students.