CBS News
What we know about the Georgia high school shooting victims
Four people were killed and at least nine others were wounded when a shooter opened fire at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday morning. Two of the victims killed in the shooting were students at the school and the others were teachers, authorities said. They were identified as Mason Schermerhorn, Christian Angulo, Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie.
The nine people hospitalized after the shooting had been shot “in some capacity” and all were expected to survive their injuries, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said at a news conference, adding that the group included eight students and one teacher. Barrow County includes Winder, the city about an hour’s drive northeast of Atlanta where Apalachee High School is located.
Authorities have arrested a suspect, 14-year-old Colt Gray, who was a student at the high school. He was taken into custody alive and will be charged with murder and “handled” as an adult, said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.
Here is what we know about the victims so far.
Christina Irimie
Apalachee High School
Christina Irimie was one of two teachers at Apalachee High School who died in the shooting. She was 53.
She is listed as a mathematics instructor in the staff directory published online by the Barrow County School District.
Isaac Sanguma, a student at the school who was there when the shooting happened, told “CBS Mornings” that Irimie was his math teacher.
Sanguma recalled speaking to Irimie for the last time on Wednesday morning when, he said, she encouraged him to get to class on time. The high school junior described Irimie as welcoming and said she prioritized instilling a sense of confidence in her students. He also said she was a kind person who told “corny jokes.”
“I didn’t know that was going to be my last time seeing her and talking to her,” Sanguma said. “I just can’t believe my teacher, somebody I see every day … it just don’t feel real.”
Richard Aspinwall
Apalachee High School
Richard Aspinwall was another math teacher at Apalachee High School who died in the shooting. He was 39.
Aspinwall was an assistant coach for the high school’s football team and a father to two young girls, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The head football coach, Mike Hancock, told the outlet that Aspinwall would hug his wife, Shayna, and their children in the end zone after every game.
He formerly served as the secondary football coach at Mountain View High School in Lawrenceville, Georgia, according to that school’s football team.
“With deepest sympathy we share that former MV secondary coach Ricky Aspinwall was tragically lost during the senseless act at a nearby high school today,” reads a message posted on social media by the Mountain View Bears. “Coach A was a beloved member of MVHS football and the school’s math department. We pray for Shayna and his girls.”
Christian Angulo
Angulo was one of two students killed in the shooting at Apalachee High School. He was 14.
A GoFundMe campaign created by Lisette Angulo, who identified herself as Angulo’s oldest sister, describes him as “a very good kid” who was “very sweet and so caring.”
“He was so loved by many,” it reads. “His loss was so sudden and unexpected.. We are truly heartbroken.. He really didn’t deserve this.”
Angulo’s family has asked for donations to help support their funeral expenses. As of Thursday afternoon, the campaign had already raised more than $40,000, far exceeding its original goal.
Mason Schermerhorn
Mason Schermerhorn was the other student killed in Wednesday’s school shooting. Like Angulo, Schermerhorn was also 14.
Friends of Schermerhorn’s family told the New York Times that he was a family-oriented teenager who “really enjoyed life.” One of them, identified by the newspaper as 40-year-old Doug Kilburn, said Schermerhorn “always had an upbeat attitude about everything.” Louis Briscoe, a coworker and friend of Schermerhorn’s mother, said the teenager and his family were looking forward to their upcoming vacation at Disney World, the New York Times reported.
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
