The security officers (SROs, or School Resource Officers) credited with bringing an end to the September shooting rampage at Apalachee High School that left four dead and nine wounded gave a detailed report of that day in a recent newspaper interview.
The story has been posted on the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page:
“Apalachee SROs speak for first time on tragedy
By Morgan Ervin Main Street News
In the moments before gunfire erupted at Apalachee High School the morning of Sept. 4, Barrow County School Resource Officers (SROs) Chase Boyd and Brandon King were standing in the school’s atrium discussing plans for their Bible study class that evening. What happened in the next 70 seconds would test their training, faith and courage in ways they never imagined.
“It almost sounded like a muffled snare drum at first,” said Boyd, a 15-year law enforcement veteran who serves as a certified use-of-force instructor for the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office.
“The sound was different because of how it traveled down those long hallways,” Boyd said, adding that several teachers mistook it for students kicking lockers.
Without hesitation, both officers ran toward the gunfire – approximately 200 yards away from where they were standing. “It wasn’t until we kept getting closer then it started registering more like the sound of gunfire,” said King, a deputy in his first year as an SRO in Barrow County after transferring from Gwinnett County.
What they encountered when they rounded the corner was something their training hadn’t prepared them for: thick smoke and dust filling the hallway. With near-zero visibility, they could only make out a black silhouette in the haze.
“One of the unexpected challenges was all the dust and smoke — we couldn’t really see,” said Boyd. “That’s not something we’d ever trained for before.”
“The reason he is still alive is because we couldn’t see him to shoot him,” Boyd added.
Their training, however, had prepared them for the mental aspects of the response. “Our mindset needs to be that we will probably get shot,” Boyd explained, describing their annual active shooter drills. “Whether or not we die is a coin flip, but our job is to stop the shooter from taking more lives.”
Miraculously, a single verbal command was all it took for shooter, Colt Gray, 14, to surrender. When they issued the command, Gray was actively aiming his weapon at a fleeing student. Upon hearing the command, Gray immediately dropped the weapon. Although Boyd and King do not know the identity of the student Gray was targeting when they commanded him to surrender, it is certain they saved that student’s life.
Boyd’s presence at the school that day seemed almost providential as he typically works at Barrow Arts and Sciences Academy and had come to Apalachee to deliver a Bible to a student that morning — a seemingly ordinary task that placed him precisely where he needed to be when chaos erupted. Inside that Bible, Boyd and King referenced Ephesians 6:10-18, the verse they planned to discuss that evening at Bible study, which is about putting on the full armor of God and being ready to fight against evil.
“My personal belief is whatever demon or whatever was in that kid to make him do pure evil… left when God rounded that corner,” Boyd said.
“God was a huge factor that day, among our training and everything we’ve done prior to this. If it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t be here today,” said King. “We did what God put us here to do,” he added.
Boyd and King’s response time was also remarkable -just 38 seconds from first shot to first verbal command, and one minute and ten seconds until the suspect was in handcuffs.
“Everybody knew we had one down, but they didn’t know if there were others,” said King.
That 30 second gap, King said, is due to them trying to figure out if there was anyone else on approach. “That’s why there’s that space because once we identify the weapon, we sped up our approach.”
The response drew immediate backup from multiple agencies arriving quickly on scene. Barrow Sheriff Jud Smith, his deputies and local first responders moved in before the all-clear, demonstrating what the Boyd and King described as a unified response where “everybody’s role was equally important.”
The experience has led to changes in training protocols, including the addition of smoke machines to simulate low-visibility conditions. But for the Boyd and King and many of the deputies involved, the incident reinforced something beyond tactical lessons: the importance of faith in their work.
King noted that even though security features were in place, like classroom doors that lock from the inside, no measure can guarantee complete safety.
“There’s no magic policy or legislation that’s going to stop this. At the end of the day, if someone wants to do bad things, they’ll find a way,” Boyd said. ” There has to be a community change, a heart change.”
“Every tragedy that happens in our fallen, broken world, God’s hand is still in it,” Boyd said. “We have the opportunity to either lean on him or turn from him when things like this happen.”
In the aftermath, the officers have focused on reassuring the school community. “We want to help give comfort to the students and staff that they’re as safe as they can possibly be with us here,” King said. “We want everyone to know how quickly we reacted — not for recognition, but for their peace of mind,” King said. “It wasn’t hours or minutes. It was seconds.”
Standing in the hallways where the shooting occurred, bullet holes in lockers and classroom walls are the only signs of the tragedy that unfolded there. While the hallways where shots once echoed are now walled off, the memory of that day remains clear for these officers who didn’t hesitate when duty called.
Despite their heroism, the officers remain humble about their actions that day. “We’re just ordinary people,” Boyd said. “Throughout scripture, you can see where God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.” “