Layla Renee Contreras, lead organizer of the community group Change for Chee and a graduate of Apalachee High School, speaks inside the Georgia Capitol on Tuesday, Feb. 4, about wanting lawmakers to consider the issue of firearm access. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
An Apalachee High School student is urging lawmakers to consider the issue of firearm access in their talks about improving school safety in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Winder, Georgia, five months ago.
Standing inside the State Capitol on Tuesday, Isabel Trejo, a senior at Apalachee, described how her scars from that day are still raw.
Her math teacher, Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, was one of four people killed in the Sept. 4 shooting. The 14-year-old arrested, Colt Gray, allegedly got the semiautomatic assault rifle used in the attack from his father. Father and son are both facing murder charges.
“Our state representatives have a clear opportunity to make sure that no other students, teachers or families in Georgia have to endure what we have endured,” Trejo said.
She applauded Republican House Speaker Jon Burns for rolling out a school safety bill the day before that’s backed by Aspinwall’s parents and that would allocate more grants to bulk up security.
The GOP-controlled legislature in Texas passed similar bills after an 18-year-old used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, while gun-related legislation championed by the victims’ families made little progress.
Even so, Trejo is hopeful that the tragedy in her hometown can lead to change across Georgia — a state with some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws.
Trejo was joined by Apalachee families and Ishmael “Junior” Angulo, whose brother Christian Angulo died in the shooting, to support Johns Creek Democratic Rep. Michelle Au and others who are calling for greater gun regulation.
“It’s not enough to punish after that unsecured gun has been used in the commission of a crime,” Au said. “The goal needs to be prevention.”
Au is sponsoring a bill called the Pediatric Health Safe Storage Act that would require gun owners to secure their firearms and hold them accountable if a child gets their hands on an unsecured weapon.
“The families of Apalachee and Barrow County have not moved on, and we owe it to them to give this issue the attention and the work it deserves, even in an environment where the challenges to progress seem daunting,” Au said.
Georgia State Rep. Michelle Au, D-Johns Creek, holds a press conference on school safety and gun violence prevention with families of Apalachee High School at the State Capitol, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
The bill needs to have a committee hearing and a vote before Crossover Day. So far, it hasn’t gotten either, but Layla Renee Contreras, lead organizer of the community group Change for Chee and a graduate of Apalachee, is confident it can get there.
“People in my community are gun owners,” Contreras said. “We strongly support the Second Amendment…. I mean, it’s common sense for people to store their guns securely and safely, to keep it out of reach from their minor’s hands. So I think that both of these two bills go hand-in-hand with one another.”
Contreras’ mother and sister were inside Apalachee at the time of the shooting. Since then, she’s been outspoken about wanting Barrow County Schools to do more to protect its students and employees.
However, the district’s chief of staff, Matt Thompson, recently said some things are out of their control and pointed to how they’re still struggling to hire more school resource officers despite having the funding.
“We are concerned that multiple months in we’re not getting more applicants for this. … That is critical for safety, for our school culture and it’s what our community overwhelmingly wanted,” Thompson said.
Shortly after the news conference on Tuesday, students at Apalachee held a walkout to protest the state’s gun laws and in solidarity with the victims of other recent mass shootings at Antioch High School in Tennessee and Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin.
