3 arrested for school shooting plans had set date, made checklist, warrants say
Three people made social media posts about an agreement they’d made with one another. They’d drawn up a to-do list for gear they would need, gotten a floor plan and vowed to provide weapons for the cause. The target? According to police, a metro Atlanta high school.
The conspiracy, which originated in social media posts flagged by the FBI, included a floor plan of the school and lists of items to wear during the planned shooting, according to police warrants obtained Tuesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Shane Keith Taylor, 17, of Metter, Georgia; Michael Brandon Terry, 21, of Chatsworth, California; and a juvenile from Canton, whose identity was not released, allegedly conspired to murder students at the high school, Canton police said.
The FBI flagged “threatening social media posts” to the Cherokee County School District Police Department, which requested assistance from Canton police on Oct. 19, officials said in a news release.
Investigators say they connected a juvenile in Canton to the threats and charged the individual with conspiracy to commit murder and disruption or interference with the operation of public schools.
Warrants obtained by the AJC for Taylor and Terry allege they picked a date for the attack, obtained a floor plan of the school, pledged to provide weapons and made a list of items to get, including body armor, video cameras and combat boots. The Cherokee County clerk’s office did not provide the juvenile’s warrant Tuesday evening.
Taylor and Terry each face conspiracy to commit murder charges. Taylor was taken into custody in Metter and has been booked in Cherokee County jail, and Terry, who was arrested in California, will also be brought to Georgia to face charges, officials said.
Taylor’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. No attorney is yet listed for Terry in the Cherokee County online court system.
Canton police urged parents to “teach their children the importance of reporting threats” and asked anyone with information on the case to come forward.
“The safety of our students and school staff is a top priority, and we take every threat seriously,” said Canton Police Chief Marty Ferrell.
The school district’s superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis, in a letter to students’ families Tuesday, called the case “unsettling and upsetting” and said the juvenile was previously enrolled at the high school.
“I want to recognize that our safety and security processes and protocols worked and I am encouraged by the resolve and dedication of multiple law enforcement agencies — including the FBI, the Canton Police Department, the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, our School Police, and agencies beyond our county boundaries — who all worked tirelessly to ensure Cherokee High School and every school across our district remains safe, secure and focused on learning,” Davis said in the statement.
Georgia’s deadliest school shooting, which took place on Sept. 4, 2024, at Apalachee High School, also originated with threatening online posts in the “true crime community,” or “TCC,” as prosecutors detailed in court earlier this year. The TCC is a decentralized network of users who discuss details of school shootings and their perpetrators, obsess over the details of their crimes and, in rarer instances, carry out attacks of their own, the AJC previously reported.
School shootings and close calls can sometimes spur copycats to make threats or take action on their plans. After the Apalachee shooting, more than 100 students were arrested and charged related to making threats of violence to schools.
In 2025, Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law House Bill 268, a wide-ranging piece of legislation requiring public schools to identify, assess and mitigate potential threats made by students and to create plans to help students in need get behavioral health support. The measure went into effect with Kemp’s signature.
“Ensuring the safety of all those in our schools is and will always be a top priority,” Kemp said before signing the bill.
The FBI declined to answer questions Tuesday about the origins of the social media posts or whether they were connected to the TCC. Investigators also haven’t disclosed how the three suspects met and communicated. Canton police did not respond to a request for additional information Tuesday. The investigation is still ongoing.
In the Apalachee shooting, the perpetrator left behind markers or callbacks to prior shootings as a means to pay homage and gain notoriety in the TCC, where specific dates, items of clothing, personal belongings and sayings connected to prominent school shooters hold particular significance, the AJC reported.
On Aug. 20, 2013, a man broke into a DeKalb County elementary school bearing over 500 rounds of ammunition and exchanged gunfire with police before surrendering, the AJC reported at the time. No one was injured, and a school bookkeeper was credited with talking the man out of it, saving the children’s lives. The date of that shooting matches the day outlined in the plans of the three people arrested Tuesday.
Back in 2023, the FBI also flagged one of the Apalachee High School shooter’s online posts threatening to commit an attack on a school to local investigators, the AJC previously reported. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office went to his home and questioned him but did not take him into custody.
Cassidy Alexander contributed reporting to this story.