Georgia high school shooting spotlights panic alert system: 'Probably saved a lot of lives'

The deadly shooting Wednesday at a high school in Georgia has drawn attention to the school's use of a panic button system to alert the threat.

Two students and two teachers were killed when the alleged 14-year-old suspect opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, authorities said. Eight students and one teacher were also injured, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

The suspect -- 14-year-old Colt Gray, a student at Apalachee High School -- was encountered by three school resource officers and immediately surrendered, according to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith. He was taken into custody at 10:30 a.m. ET, seven minutes after the initial service call went out, according to the Barrow County Sheriff's Office, which employs the school resource officers.

Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder in connection to the shooting, with additional charges expected, the GBI said. He is being charged as an adult.

Smith said all teachers at the school have an ID made by the safety technology company CENTEGIX wherein they can press a button to alert an "active situation." The button was pressed during the active shooting situation on Wednesday and the school resource officers began "actively looking," he said.

"When this shooting began, they interacted with the shooter, Mr. Gray, and as soon as they made contact with him, he gave up immediately," Smith said.

The teachers have had the badges for about a week, he said. Aug. 1 was the first day of classes at Apalachee High School.

More than 600,000 of CENTEGIX's wearable safety badges are used in K-12 settings, the company said. The Atlanta-based company's customers include multiple Georgia school districts, including in Cobb, Fulton and Douglas counties, according to its website.

The company said its discreet technology "accelerates emergency response by minimizing the time to identify, notify, and respond to an emergency." The badges have two alerts -- one to notify administrators to incidents like student altercations and medical emergencies, and a second to issue a campus-wide "lockdown" alert for extreme situations that also notifies 911 dispatch, according to its website.

Most alerts are for "everyday emergencies," such as behavior or medical incidents, which represented more than 98% of alerts analyzed during fall 2022, CENTEGIX found.

CENTEGIX praised the response during Wednesday's shooting.

"We are deeply saddened by the events at Apalachee High School and extend our sympathies to the Barrow County community after this terrible incident," CENTEGIX CEO Brent Cobb said in a statement. "We are grateful for the responsiveness of emergency personnel and the immediate action taken by the staff, school administrators, and first responders."

Stephen Kreyenbuhl, a 10th grade world history teacher at Apalachee High School, told CNN that pressing the button on the badge four times contacts administrators, while pressing eight times alerts a physical threat on campus.

He told ABC News that he saw his smartboard change to say "hard lockdown" before he even heard gunshots, which gave him time to prepare and start to get students into a corner.

"My co-teacher got the lights. I grabbed a pair of scissors," he said. "We drill it every semester, this whole part of lockdown. So we train it, you know, pretty, pretty frequently."

He said the door was already locked, so no one could get into the classroom.

Former FBI Agent Brad Garrett, an ABC News contributor, said the locked doors and panic system likely saved lives.

"If you think about how this could be even more dark ... think about if they didn't have the locked doors, think about if they didn't have resource officers in the school," he said. "And these panic buttons saved a lot of time, and, in my view, probably saved a lot of lives."

Questions still remain amid the investigation into the shooting, including the alleged motive of the teen suspect, how he allegedly got ahold of the firearm -- described by authorities as an AR-platform-style weapon -- and how he got the gun into the school. The school reserves the right to use "hand-held" metal detectors, according to its school policy guidebook, though it's not known if they were being used Wednesday.

Some state lawmakers are pushing for silent crisis alert systems like CENTEGIX's to be required in schools. In 2020, the Florida Legislature passed what's known as Alyssa's Law, which, in part, requires that all public schools implement a mobile panic alert system. The law is named after Alyssa Alhadeff, a 14-year-old student who was among the 17 victims killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

Georgia lawmakers introduced a version of Alyssa's Law last year, though it did not make it out of committee.

National School Safety and Security Services President Ken Trump said there is an "emotional" appeal to school safety measures like panic buttons to making people feel safer. Though he noted they are not a preventative measure against school violence and each school shooting has "different fact patterns."

"We try to learn from these incidents and glean some lessons, but what stood out in one particular incident may not transfer over to all schools and any potential future incidents that occur," he said.