'14-year-olds don't need AR-15s': Ga. senator aims at gun lobby as churches mourn

WINDER, Ga. − This small town still rocked by last week's deadly school shooting mourned its dead at church services Sunday while a Georgia senator chided the gun lobby for enriching itself "with the blood of our children."

Congregants filtered through the stained glass doors of Saints Constantine and Helen Romanian Orthodox Church on Sunday morning to pray and mourn Romania native Cristina Irimie, a beloved church member and 53-year-old math teacher at Apalachee High School, where she was gunned down Wednesday.

Also killed were Richard Aspinwall, 39, a fellow math teacher and football coach, and 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. Eight students and a teacher were wounded.

Student Colt Gray, 14, is charged with four counts of felony murder and is being held without bond.

On Sunday, a white-robed priest at Irimie's church chanted prayers in Romanian beneath a golden archway adorned with a cross. Attendees in traditional Romanian dress – women in white embroidered blouses and some men in broad leather belts – stood at the pews with bowed heads.

People exchanged quiet greetings outside the church doors as women pulled on their headscarves. Several candles burned in a small fireplace next to the entryway.

Nicolae Clempus, who serves as pastor of the nearby Saint Mary Romanian Orthodox Church, said mourners are "united in our grief. We can go through this by remembering Cristina, by being close to her family, but also healing in time."

Georgia's Romanian community mourns:Teacher was killed in Apalachee shooting

Sen. Warnock: We can do better than this

During an appearance on NBC News' Meet the Press, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., said the shooting in Winder shows "we're all sitting ducks."

"We can do better than this," he said. "This is a tragic form of American exceptionalism. This doesn't happen all over the world.'

In no other country that is not at war do you see such routine, random violence. It has become a tragic part of the "everyday lives of people," Warnock said.

Gray's father, Colin, accused of gifting or providing access to an assault rifle to his son, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.

"Fourteen-year-olds don't need AR-15s," Warnock said. "We need to get these military-style weapons off the streets."

Why Congress cannot pass comprehensive gun reform? Warnock said politicians "beholden" to gun lobbyists are to blame.

"The gun lobby lines its pockets with the blood of our children," he said.

'Not an American dream'

Weeks after Simona Ionas moved her 13-year-old and 15-year-old children to a public school from a private Christian school, she is now worried she made the worst decision of her life.

"I could take my kids to school, and they could die," she said outside the service for Irimie.

Ionas, 42, moved to the U.S. from Romania in 2004 in search of better job opportunities and "the American dream." She spoke from a picnic table .

"When the guns are in the hands of the children, it's not an American dream," she said.

Bells toll in Romania for slain teacher

Cristina Irimie, a 53-year-old math teacher killed in the shooting, was gunned down days after her mother left Georgia for her hometown in Romania after a special trip, according to George Acsente, Irimie's pastor at Saints Constantine and Helen Romanian Orthodox Church in Lilburn, Georgia.

Acsente said Irimie's mother heard bells tolling in her Romanian hometown, a tradition to honor the dead, before she knew that they rang to commemorate her daughter.

She "heard the bell and asked her son, 'Oh, maybe somebody died,'" Acsente said, prompting her son, Irimie's brother, to share the news.

Irimie's death also devastated her husband, Dorin, Acsente said.

"He's very angry," Acsente said. "He keeps saying, 'They took my baby away.'"

"I try to calm him down. I stayed probably until one o'clock in the morning with him," Acsente said.

Dorin Irimie may attend another service for Irimie scheduled for Saturday at the church. "I have no idea how he's going to handle it," Acsente said of Dorin Irimie.

Apalachee community gathers on football field

A crowd of teachers, students, and their families from Apalachee High School congregated on the school’s football field on Sunday night to grieve for victims.On the field, people embraced and stood with bowed heads in front of pictures of the victims – students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Risky Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Community members not affiliated with the school filled the bleachers.Outside the school’s entryway, a flag at half mast was surrounded by flowers, crosses, and memorials and candles. Cars filled the parking lot and spilled onto the lawn.

Football coach remembered

Friends, neighbors, colleagues and former coaches remembered Richard "Ricky" Aspinwall Sunday evening as hundreds gathered in the stands of the Flowery Branch High School football field. Aspinwall, a 39-year-old math teacher and an assistant football coach for the Apalachee Wildcats, was one of four people who were killed Wednesday.

Rev. Matt Lewis, wearing a Texas Longhorns shirt as a nod to one of Aspinwall’s favorite football teams, said he lives just a few doors down from Aspinwall and their children would often play together. He remembered his neighbor as a good man who died a “hero.”

“Ricky did what Jesus would do. He laid down his life protecting others,” said Lewis, who stood at a podium flanked by flowers and football helmets from Rome High School, where Aspinwall played as a teenager.

Derek Tiller remembered first bonding with Aspinwall while spending long hours coaching football at Mountain View High School together. Tiller said though he was technically Aspinwall’s superior, he often found himself learning from Aspinwall. The pair quickly developed a friendship off the field and would spend countless days cooking together, swimming, boating, building treehouses and going to concerts with their families, Tiller said.

“He was a tremendous football coach, but I'm not standing up here because we coach football,” Tiller said. “Again, I'm standing up here because of the friend that Ricky was to me.”

GOP candidate: Blame parents, not guns

Eugene Yu, a Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia, offered condolences for Irimie at her service. Speaking to USA TODAY outside the church, Yu said gun control had "nothing to do" with the shooting last week because "a gun itself" doesn't kill. Responsibility falls on the shooter's parents, he said.

"If your daughter or your son is crazy, you know you cannot control him, you're not going to go out there and buy a gun to give it to him, right?" Yu said.

Schools should ramp up security measures and law enforcement should get more funding, he said.

"Whenever this kind of tragedy comes up, there must be 10,000 different reasons out there," Yu said. "But we just as the public have to be aware, and each individual family, the school, the local law enforcement, they all have to work together."

Mother of Georgia shooting suspect:Mom said she called school before attack, report says

Shooter's mother called school minutes before assault

The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with killing the four people at the high school said she alerted the school counselor the morning of the shooting that there was an "extreme emergency" and her son needed to be found, the Washington Post reported Saturday. The call log obtained by the Post shows Marcee Gray, the suspect's mother, made a 10-minute phone call to the school about half an hour before the shooting is believed to have started.

“I was the one that notified the school counselor at the high school,” Gray said in a text message to her sister, Annie Brown, according to a screenshot of the conversation obtained by the Post. “I told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find (my son) to check on him.”

Brown declined to elaborate what prompted Gray to warn the school, but Charles Polhamus, the suspect's grandfather, told the New York Post Saturday that Gray rushed to Winder, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, after getting a text message from her son that read “I’m sorry, mom."

Marcee Gray in the last two years was arrested on multiple charges including suspicion of possessing controlled substances including fentanyl and pain killers, according to court documents filed in Barrow County. Gray ultimately pleaded guilty to using a license plate to conceal identity, criminal damage to property in the second degree and criminal trespass/family violence.

− N'dea Yancey-Bragg