BARROW COUNTY, Ga. — On the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, Channel 2 Action News sat down with the county’s sheriff as his community continues to move on from the tragedy.
“Unfortunately, this is our September 11th. This is our 9-11 here, our September 4th,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
Sept. 4 is a day Smith can’t forget, remembering how he sat in his office when he got the call of a mass shooting at Apalachee High School.
“Your heart drops. It’s a very, ‘Is this a drill? Is this fake?’” Smith told Channel 2’s Michael Doudna.
Smith remembers rushing to Apalachee High School and going inside.
“I see the suspect, I see a lot of yelling, a lot of smells,” Smith said.
And then, after, having to confirm to the world the tragedy inside about the lives lost.
“Pure evil did what happened today, that’s all I can tell you,” Smith said at the time.
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“It brings you back to a place where you’re asking for God’s grace to give you words to speak,” Smith said, looking back on that day.
In the wake of the shooting, a community grieved while working to improve. The school district invested in new safety measures, such as hiring more SROs, while the sheriff’s office committed to more active shooter training at schools.
“Every principal has reached out to us and said, ‘I want to be on the list next.’ We are very proud of what we’ve done to put in place to ensure that our children are safe,” Smith said.
Smith told Doudna that the work is far from done, as they owe it to the community to learn from what happened on that day one year ago.
“We want to make sure that when our kids are dropped off at school, and our staff come in here and work every day to teach those children, that they don’t have to worry that something bad is going to happen,” Smith said.
Smith believes the community has grown closer, stronger and safer.
“I said love will prevail, and it has continued to prevail, and it will. He didn’t count for Barrow County. He didn’t count on that,” Smith said.
The two deputies who stopped the shooting were honored this year at the National Association of School Resource Officers conference in Texas with the National Award of Valor, preventing more deaths and injuries.
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