Georgia school shooting: Father of 14 y/o suspect arrested, faces several charges

Sept. 5, 2024, 11:52 p.m.

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Authorities have arrested the father of the teenage suspect accused of killing four individuals at a Georgia high school, they announced on Thursday.

Colin Gray, 54, the father of Colt Gray, faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to a social media post by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

No further details were immediately available. A press conference was scheduled for later Thursday.

Authorities have charged 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult with murder for the shootings that occurred on Wednesday at Apalachee High School outside of Atlanta. Arrest warrants obtained by the Associated Press accuse him of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle in the attack, which resulted in the deaths of two students and two teachers, and injuries to nine other people.

According to a sheriff's report obtained on Thursday, the teenager accused of opening fire at a Georgia high school denied making threats to carry out a school shooting when authorities questioned him last year about a menacing post on social media.

Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.

“We did not neglect any aspect of this investigation,” Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. “We utilized all available resources based on the information we had at the time.”

Authorities have charged 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult with murder in connection with the shootings that occurred on Wednesday at Apalachee High School near Atlanta. Arrest warrants obtained by the AP accuse him of using a semi-automatic assault-style rifle in the attack, which resulted in the deaths of two students and two teachers, and injuries to nine other individuals.

When a sheriff’s investigator from neighbouring Jackson County interviewed Gray last year, his father said the boy had struggled with his parent’s separation and often got picked on at school. The teen frequently fired guns and hunted with his father, who photographed him with a deer’s blood on his cheeks.

Advertisement “He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” the father, Colin Gray, said according to a transcript obtained from the sheriff’s office.

The teen was interviewed after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.

The FBI’s tip pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address linked to Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy said “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” according to the investigator’s report.

Advertisement The interview transcript quotes the teen as saying: “I promise I would never say something where …” with the rest of that denial listed as inaudible.

The investigator wrote that no arrests were made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a digital evidence trail indicating it had been accessed in different Georgia cities as well as Buffalo, New York.

The incident was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have sparked heated debates about gun control and heightened anxieties among parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills. However, there has been little change to national gun laws.

Advertisement Classes were canceled on Thursday at the Georgia high school, though some individuals came to place flowers around the flagpole and kneel in the grass with their heads bowed.

When the suspect left math class on Wednesday, Lyela Sayarath assumed her quiet classmate who had recently transferred was skipping school again. However, he returned later and wanted to re-enter the room. Some students tried to unlock the door but instead retreated.

“I’m guessing they saw something, but for some reason, they didn’t open the door,” Sayarath remarked.

The teen then opened fire in the hallway, authorities said.

Sayarath recounted hearing a rapid series of 10 to 15 gunshots. The students dropped to the floor and moved on their hands and knees to find a secure spot to hide.

Advertisement Two school security officers confronted the shooter within minutes of the gunshots being reported, Hosey stated. The teen immediately surrendered.

Gray remained in custody on Thursday at a regional juvenile detention center. His initial court appearance was scheduled for Friday morning.

He faces charges in connection with the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14 years old, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, according to Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.

At least nine other individuals — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder — sustained injuries and were transported to hospitals. All were anticipated to recover, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith stated.

Authorities have refrained from disclosing any potential motive or outlining how the suspect gained possession of the firearm and managed to bring it onto the school grounds, which serves approximately 1,900 students in a rapidly developing region on the outskirts of metropolitan Atlanta's continuously expanding urban area.

This incident marked the 30th mass killing in the United States so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University. At least 127 individuals have lost their lives in these killings, which are defined as events involving the deaths of four or more people within a 24-hour period, excluding the perpetrator — adhering to the same definition employed by the FBI.

Prior cases have emerged in which someone who was once on the FBI’s radar but was not arrested went on to commit violence.

Just one month before the tragic Parkland, Florida, high school shooting in 2018, where Nikolas Cruz took the lives of 17 innocent people, the FBI received a concerning tip. The information indicated that Cruz had been discussing the possibility of carrying out a mass shooting. In a separate incident, the FBI also investigated a tip related to the individual later convicted of the deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado in 2022.

These cases highlight the complex challenges law enforcement agencies face when trying to distinguish between concerning behavior and actual criminal activity. Every year, investigators must examine tens of thousands of tips to identify those that pose a credible threat. Tragic incidents like the school shooting in Georgia raise crucial questions about whether more thorough investigations could have prevented such acts of violence.

The sheriff’s report says investigator Daniel Miller spoke to the boy and his father on May 21, 2023. The father said his son had access to guns in the house.

“I mean they aren’t loaded, but they are down,” Gray’s father said, according to the interview transcript.

He described a photo on his cellphone from a recent hunting trip with his son: “You see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer.” Gray’s father called it “the greatest day ever.”

The teenager told Miller that he discontinued his use of Discord a few months prior due to his account being compromised.

"I have to take you at your word, and I hope you're being truthful with me," Miller responded.

A phone number associated with the account was linked to a different person in another Georgia city, the report said. The account’s profile name, written in Russian, is translated to Lanza. The investigator noted that Adam Lanza was the perpetrator of the 2012 mass shooting that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The sheriff’s office alerted local schools to continue monitoring the teen. However, the investigator concluded that he “could not substantiate the tip I received from the FBI to take further action.”