The four victims of the latest mass shooting at a U.S. school were two teenage students and two teachers.
Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, were killed Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.
Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie were both math teachers at the school. Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.
They all died at the hands of a troubled student, who was also 14 and armed with a clone of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle that has been used in numerous deadly school shootings across America, authorities said.
As Winder, a town of 18,000 about an hour’s drive from Atlanta, prepared for a series of funerals, portraits of the four victims who died in what was supposed to be a safe space began to emerge.
“Those who died are heroes to me,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said after their bodies were identified.
Christian Angulo
His family was plunged into grief after it was revealed he was one of two students who were fatally shot.
“He was only 14 years old. He was a very good boy, very kind and very caring,” said Angulo’s older sister, Lisette, who set up a GoFundMe page for her brother. “He was so loved by so many. His loss was so sudden and unexpected. We are truly heartbroken. He really didn’t deserve this.”
Mason Schermerhorn
Friends of his mother told The New York Times that the teenager had recently started at Apalachee and was looking forward to his next vacation to Walt Disney World.
“He really loved life,” Doug Kilburn, 40, a friend who has known Schermerhorn’s mother for a decade, told the newspaper. “He always had an optimistic attitude about everything.”
Lilianah Ahmed, who identified herself as Schermerhorn’s sister, wrote in an Instagram post that her brother “did not make it out of school alive,” TODAY reported.
In a since-deleted post, Ahmed also wrote that his brother was autistic, TODAY reported.
Cristina Irimie
One of the murdered math teachers, Irimie, 53, was a member of the Romanian immigrant community in the Atlanta area.
“She dedicated her life to shaping the minds and hearts of students and the community,” wrote Corneliu Caprar, a family friend, on the GoFundMe page he set up to raise money for her funeral.
Caprar’s appeal for donations was written in English and Romanian and included a photo of Irimie with a garland of flowers in her hair.
Her friend, Silvia Pasch, 65, said they met about seven years ago at Saints Constantine and Helena Church near Atlanta, where they sometimes volunteered and helped raise funds for the church.
“I can’t explain the sadness I feel thinking I won’t see her again,” she said.
Pasch remembers her friend gathering children from church to hold a folk dance at a festival earlier this year.
“The shooting is a tragedy,” Pasch said. “She was a special person. Anytime she could help, she did.”
Richard Aspinwall
In addition to being a math teacher, Aspinwall was a 39-year-old married father of two daughters and the defensive coordinator for the Apalachee Wildcats football team.
Ariel Bowling, a 15-year-old Apalachee High School student, told “TODAY” that Aspinwall was her math teacher and “the kindest soul ever.”
“I just wanted people to know that he was a really nice man, that he really pushed you and he really worked hard,” Bowling said.
John Poitevint, head football coach at Mountain View High School in neighboring Gwinnett County, said Aspinwall coached special teams and defensive backs for his team for three years through 2022. He said they last spoke two weeks ago.
“He was a great person, he put himself last,” Poitevint said. “He was very humble. You knew if you needed help, he would be there for you.”
Poitevint said he learned of the shooting shortly afterward and tried calling Aspinwall.
“I was just hoping that everybody was okay, and I never thought it would be him, to be honest,” Poitevint said. “I tried to reach Ricky, but obviously, I didn’t get any response. He was my right-hand man.”
On Thursday, 17-year-old students Robert McCrimmon and Jaden Hunter each carried a bouquet of flowers to the school’s flagpole, where students and community members commemorated their fallen classmates and teachers.
McCrimmon, who said authorities were aware of a previous threat made by the alleged shooter, said that “if precautions had been taken, we would not be here and in this pain.”
Hunter said people were traumatized.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to go back to school,” she said. “Right now, I don’t want to. It’s very sad because it seems like this could have been avoided if you had known that he said he was going to do something like this.”
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