According to the Tift County Board of Education, at 10:45 a.m., all Tift County Public Schools were cleared by local law enforcement. At 11 a.m., each principal began determining the appropriate safe time to return to their building based on vehicle pickup traffic. Once the students have returned to their building, schools will resume their normal daily schedule to include normal dismissal procedure and times. Everyone should hopefully be back in their buildings by lunch. All staff will be at the schools until the end of the school day to ensure students are picked up in a safe manner.

Tift County Sheriff Gene Scarbrough told The Gazette that they do have a suspect in custody. He said the suspect is a local male student; he was taken into custody about 10:30 a.m. Scarbrough stated that they were able to track the student by his cell phone.

More information will be provided as soon as it's made available.