The father of the Georgia school shooter, Colt Gray, was arrested on charges including murder after he was found to have purchased the AR-15-style rifle the 14 year old used shoot four people dead on campus.
Colin Gray, 54, has been arrested by local authorities and charged with two counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Officials confirmed at a news conference that the charges are based on Colin allegedly “knowingly” giving his son access to the firearm used in the shooting.
The 14-year-old was arrested Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, just minutes after he killed two students and two teachers with the semi-automatic weapon.
The father is said to have purchased the deadly weapon as a Christmas present for his son, just months after they received an initial visit from the FBI.
Colin Gray (pictured left), 54, has been taken into custody by local authorities and charged with two counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Officials confirmed at a news conference that the charges stem from Colin “knowingly” giving his son access to the firearm used in the shooting.
The family’s home was searched on Wednesday afternoon, with FBI investigators seizing firearms and evidence.
Neighbors saw Colin return to his home Wednesday night, but it is unclear whether he turned himself in to authorities.
A neighbour told DailyMail.com they were ‘terrified’ by the new charges, adding that the family had ‘kept aloof’ and had not integrated into the community in the two years they had lived at the property.
“These charges are based on the fact that Mr. Gray knowingly allowed his son, Colt, to possess a gun,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said at an evening news conference.
“His charges are directly related to his son’s actions and his allowing him to possess a gun.”
In Georgia, second-degree murder means that someone caused the death of another person by committing second-degree cruelty to children, regardless of intent.
It is punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison, while second-degree murder and second-degree murder carry a minimum sentence of life in prison. Involuntary manslaughter means that someone unintentionally causes the death of another.
It is yet another example of prosecutors holding parents accountable for the actions of their children in school shootings.
Colt Gray received the gun he allegedly used to shoot four people at his Georgia high school as a Christmas present from his father
In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first people convicted of a mass school shooting.
They were sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison for not having a firearm at home and for being indifferent to signs that their son’s mental health was deteriorating before he murdered four students in 2021.
The arrest came after sources claimed the father of three bought his 14-year-old son the assault rifle used in the shooting as a Christmas present in 2023.
According to detectives, this was just months after the teen and his father were questioned by local police in connection with online threats about committing a school shooting via the social media platform Discord.
The teen was questioned after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, “may have threatened to shoot up a high school tomorrow.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.
The FBI tip pointed to a Discord account linked to an email address associated with Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy “said he would never say something like that, even as a joke,” the investigator’s report said.
The transcript of the interview states that the teenager said, “I promise I will never say anything that…” while the rest of that denial is unintelligible.
The investigator wrote that no arrests were made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account. The account contained profile information in Russian and there was a digital evidence trail showing the account was opened in several cities in Georgia and Buffalo, New York.
Mason Schermerhorn, 14, an autistic student at Apalachee High School, was the first victim to be identified. Christian Angulo, 14, also lost his life in the senseless shooting
Teacher Richard Aspinwall was named as one of the four victims of the shooting. Christina Irimie was also identified as a victim
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would warrant charges at the time.
“We made absolutely no mistake in this,” Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. “We did everything we could do with what we had at the time.”
According to agents, the Discord account had a username in Russian and the letters translated to the name Lanza, a reference to Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.
Gray denied being the author of the threats and told police he had shut down his Discord after being hacked repeatedly. He expressed concern that someone would make such accusations about him.
“He knows how dangerous guns are, what they can do and what not to use them,” the father, Colin Gray, said, according to a transcript obtained by the sheriff’s office.
Colin reportedly assured officers that he would be “furious” if he found out the allegations about his son making threats were true, and that “all weapons [would] Go away.’
Online, his aunt swore “full throttle blood” when she claimed he had been “abused” his entire life. Those comments were deleted last night after a flood of backlash.
Sheriff’s investigators closed the case because they could not prove Gray had any connection to the Discord account and found no grounds to seek a court order to seize the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office on Thursday.
Two students look at a memorial as flags fly at half-staff after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
The U.S. flag and the Georgia state flag fly at half-staff after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
The boy is said to be obsessed with other notorious school shooters, such as Nikolas Cruz, the killer from Parkland, Florida.
By the time he put down his AR-style weapon, there were already two dead in the school building.
Students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, and teachers Richard Aspenwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, were named as the deceased.
When police searched the teen’s Georgia home after the massacre, they reportedly found evidence that the teen was “obsessed” with mass shootings, particularly the 2018 Parkland massacre that left 17 people dead.
Gray was known to the FBI after several tips came in about him last year.
The boy remains in Georgia juvenile detention pending his first court appearance, scheduled for Friday morning. He will be charged as an adult, sheriffs said.
According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by school resource officers at the scene.
Sheriff Smith revealed that Wednesday was Gray’s first “real day” at Apalachee High.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by school resource officers at the scene
Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed.
He said, “He was a brand new student at Barrow County Schools, he had enrolled about two weeks earlier. This was his second day at school. He had been there before, he left early, that day and this was his first real full day.”
According to police, Gray opened fire at about 10:23 a.m., killing at least 13 people. Panic ensued at the school.
Footage showed students streaming onto campus as terrified parents rushed to find their children. One mother described the scene outside the school as sheer “chaos.”
A makeshift memorial has been set up with a wreath and flowers. On Thursday, families and students gathered at the somber scene to pay their respects to the lives lost in the tragedy.
