School resource officers Chase Boyd and Brandon King sprinted toward the sound of gunfire inside Apalachee High School.
Before them would be a half-minute of chaos – and split-second, life-or-death decisions – that, in retrospect, must have been guided by God, Boyd said in an interview posted online by a Winder community church.
Four people – two students and two teachers – were killed in the school on September 4. Seven others were injured.
A grand jury indicted the 14-year-old shooter Colt Gray on 55 charges, including four counts of felony and malice murder. His father, Colin Gray, was indicted on 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder. The indictment alleged Colin gave his son “access to a firearm and ammunition after receiving sufficient warning that Colt Gray would endanger the bodily safety of another.” Both have pleaded not guilty.
When Boyd and King heard gunshots in the school, they raced toward a smoke-filled hallway, propelled by instinct.
“We didn’t have a whole lot of information, but … then all of a sudden we hear gunshots, and we both kind of looked at each other for that split second,” Boyd said in an interview with River Hills Church, a community-focused Christian church.
The sounds were disorienting.
“It didn’t quite sound like what we would expect a gunshot to sound like inside a building,” Boyd said. As he and King navigated the hallway, Boyd communicated their situation over a radio: “We’ve got an active shooter at Apalachee High School.”
When they reached a hallway intersection, Boyd described encountering a black silhouette obscured by smoke and dust.
“We can’t shoot because we don’t know if it’s a teacher, a student, the shooter. We have no idea what’s at the end of that hall,” Boyd said in the interview.
“We start yelling some things that I’m not going to repeat,” he said, as he described telling the silhouette to get on the ground.
Officer describes confronting the shooter
The figure quickly complied and Boyd heard a clack sound. He assumed a gun had been dropped.
On the ground near the person now lying face-down was an assault-style rifle and what Boyd initially thought was a duffel bag.
It turned out to be a victim.
“There was nothing we could do for him, unfortunately,” Boyd said in the interview.
The officers quickly got the shooter handcuffed, Boyd said. But he didn’t stay quiet.
“He loses his mind in the handcuffs and tries to get up and starts cussing and being aggressive,” Boyd said.
If the shooter had shown that intensity when they first confronted him, Boyd said, the day’s tragedy could’ve gotten much worse.
“There was no reason for him to stop shooting at all. Had he just opened fire into that hallway at us, he could have killed us,” Boyd said, noting the shooter had the ammunition to do so.
“I took several full magazines of ammunition out of his pockets like he wasn’t done,” he recalled.
And then the officer reflected on the carnage that the ammunition could have created.
“The shooter walked around the cafeteria that morning … There were 130-some-odd kids if not more in that cafeteria,” he said.
Why he didn’t open fire in that cafeteria – or fire on himself and King in that hallway intersection – it had to be a “God thing,” Boyd said.
And that may have saved the shooter’s life, too, he said.
“The shooter lived because we couldn’t see him. By the time we got to him he was no longer a threat,” Boyd said. “Because he wasn’t a threat, we can’t just execute him.”
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