all right good afternoon uh my name is Sheriff Jud Smith I'm the sheriff of bar County Sheriff's Office we're standing on the capus of appalache high school here at bar County schools first and foremost I want to lift up our community I want to give our sympathies to our community our school system our kids our parents that had to witness this today uh obviously what you see behind us uh is a evil thing today at about 9:30 this morning we received the first call that there was an active shooter in this on on this campus
we're not releasing any information as far as injuries but we have multiple injuries uh this is a very very fluid investigation it's very early and I have asked the assistance of the gbi and the agencies here behind me today and there multiple agencies that responded this morning to help us and help the sheriff's office we do have a suspect in custody and we are asking for your patience as a media to please let us get the facts that we need to make sure we get this right again I've asked the gbi to help us the
Sheriff's Office to help us along with this I know this is not what you want to hear but I'm not going to answer questions after this is over with but I wanted to give you the respect and our community respect to let them know what was going on initially we're in the process of reunifying our students with their parents obviously that's chaotic but we want to be respectful of them and their privacy as well I want to thank the state the federal agencies the local agencies that showed up today as you can see the multiple
EMS and fire from other agencies that responded today again I ask that you lift up bar County Schools lift up appalache lift up our agencies this is going to take multiple days for us to get answers as to what happened and why this happened but I wanted to give you a statement it is our hope in conjunction with these people behind us that we can give you another statement around 4:00 cuz I know you have to go back on the air that is my hope but I wanted to be fluid with you all understanding that
it's fluid as well this investigation I appreciate you being patient with us again it's very active and is ever developing every minute is developing on what we're finding so we're going to have releases from other schools again we ask that you be patient with us please be patient with us and hopefully I can give you more information or more better information as you will if you will this afternoon thank you all for coming out here we'll be back shortly okay Sheriff it's been widely reported that people are dead is that true I'm not releasing any
information we have multiple injuries I'm not releasing any information guys I'm not going to answer any more questions it's time okay thank you
