The father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspect accused of killing four people at Apalachee High School, was arrested Thursday, Georgia state police officials said.
Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. An investigation is underway to determine whether the AR weapon was purchased by the boy’s father and given to him as a gift, sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News.
“These charges stem from Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a firearm,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, at a press conference Thursday evening.
Wednesday’s shooting left 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie dead. Nine other people were injured in the shooting – two teachers and seven students, authorities said Thursday evening. Thursday’s update included some good news: Authorities said “all nine people will make a full recovery and be able to leave the hospital.”
Colt Gray is being tried as an adult and appeared in court for a preliminary hearing Friday morning.
Previous warnings
A police report from Jackson County, Georgia, obtained by Yahoo News, shows that users of the social media platform Discord contacted the FBI in May 2023 and warned that someone was threatening to shoot at an unspecified middle school in the area.
Hours after Colt Gray allegedly killed four people and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, the Atlanta division of the FBI announced that it had received these anonymous tips and that Jackson County authorities had identified Gray as a suspect.
“The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located a possible offender, a 13-year-old boy, and interviewed him and his father,” the FBI wrote. “The father stated he had hunting weapons in the home, but the offender did not have unsupervised access to them. The offender denied making the threats online.”
Investigators spoke to the Grays in May 2023
Following tips from Discord users, authorities went to the Grays’ residence and spoke with both Colt, who was 13 at the time and attended Jefferson Middle School in Georgia, and his father, Colin, according to the report. Colin denied knowing what Discord was, and Colt said he had deactivated his Discord account months earlier. Discord is a free messaging app used primarily in the gaming community.
“Colt expressed concern that someone was accusing him of threatening a school shooting and stated that he would never say such a thing, even in jest,” the report said. “Colt stated that he stopped using Discord because too many people were hacking his account and he was afraid that someone would use his information for nefarious purposes.”
The tip the FBI received about the Discord account said it was created in April 2023 – after Colt said he deleted his account. Screenshots of the Discord account showed that the username was in Russian and the translation of the Russian letters gave the name Lanza. Authorities believed this was a reference to Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who committed the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012.
“Due to the conflicting nature of the information the FBI received, the claim that Colt or Colin is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated,” the report concluded. “This case will be resolved on an exceptional basis.”
“The threats were general in nature and did not involve a specific location or time,” a spokesperson for the FBI’s Atlanta division told Yahoo News on Thursday. “At this time, we have no additional information to share other than what we posted in our statement on our social media channels.”
New fees
Although there are not many precedents for bringing charges against the parents of minors involved in shootings, Michael Lawlor, a lawyer and associate professor of criminal law at the University of New Haven, pointed to the April conviction of Jennifer and James Crumbley, whose son Ethan killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021.
Lawlor said there were two key elements that authorities had to consider when deciding whether to prosecute Gray’s parents for the Apalachee shooting.
“If it can be proven that the 14-year-old actually had full access to the AR platform weapon used in the shooting (which would mean they lied to investigators in 2023) and if it can be proven that the parents knew about his murderous postings, then a conviction would be entirely possible,” Lawlor told Yahoo News before the charges against Colin Gray were announced.
The Crumbleys were accused of failing to properly secure their newly purchased gun at home, which Ethan later brought to school, and of failing to take appropriate action when their son showed signs of deteriorating mental health, even after being shown a drawing by Ethan depicting disturbing violence.
The Crumbleys were the first parents to be convicted in connection with a school shooting committed by their child. They were sentenced to at least ten years in prison.
By law, anyone convicted of manslaughter faces up to ten years in prison.
President Biden appeared to address the issue Thursday afternoon in Westby, Wisconsin.
“There are too many people who have access to guns that shouldn’t be available to them. Let’s demand secure storage of firearms. I know I lock mine away. How can you not keep an assault rifle, a gun, in a house that’s not locked away and know that your child knows where it is? You have to hold parents accountable if they give their child access to these guns,” Biden said. Authorities have not said where Gray got the AR-style rifle he allegedly used in the shootings.
