Smith went on to describe the moment they arrested the 14-year-old suspect.

“The subject immediately surrendered. He gave up, got on the ground. And the officers took him into custody.”

The suspect has since been named as Colt Gray, a student at Apalachee High School, where the shooting unfolded.

Reports since the incident have revealed that Gray was interviewed by the FBI in May 2023 after they had received anonymous reports that someone was making “online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time”.

At the time Gray denied having made the threats and the teenager was not arrested.

The FBI said in a statement: “The father stated that he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them[…] At the time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels.”

Local schools were subsequently ‘alerted’ for ‘continued monitoring of the subject’.

Later in the news conference, Sheriff Smith told how authorities are now ‘collecting evidence’ and ‘conducting interviews’.