Jefferson, Ga. — A threat posted online last year to “shoot up a middle school” was the kind that authorities have become all too familiar with in the United States.
After receiving tips about the threat, officers located a 13-year-old boy in Georgia, and an investigator spoke with the teenager and his father.
During a conversation in May 2023, the boy, Colt Gray, assured an investigator from the sheriff’s office in Jackson County, Ga., that he had not made the threat. He said he had not used Discord, the social media site where the threat was posted, in months, and had deleted his account.
“The only thing I have is TikTok, but I go there and watch videos,” Kishore said, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times.
The teenager’s father, Colin Gray, admitted his son was picked on in middle school and said he was teaching him about firearms and the outdoors to keep him away from video games.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and how not to use them,” said the elder Mr. Gray, whose son recently shot his first deer.
On Wednesday, nearly 16 months after that conversation, authorities say the teenager, now 14, walked into his high school in Winder, Ga., armed with a military-style rifle and fatally shot two 14-year-old students and two math majors. teachers before being taken into custody by school resource officers. At least eight other students and a teacher were injured.
The younger Mr. Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult, officials said. On Thursday night, Georgia law enforcement authorities said they had arrested the elder Mr. Gray, 54, and charged him with two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children. They did not immediately explain the reason for the charges.
The student’s earlier investigation raised questions about whether more could have been done to prevent the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history, leaving another American community reeling from the shock and grief of school gun violence.
Officials said the fatal rampage could have been worse. The school gave each staff member a wearable panic button on a lanyard, and one of them quickly alerted the local sheriff’s office of the shooting. Law enforcement officials said a security system was installed at Apalachee High School about a week ago.
After authorities spoke with the teenager and his father in May 2023, they were unable to conclusively link the threat posted on Discord to the boy, according to an investigative report obtained by The Times.
In an interview Thursday, Jackson County Sheriff Janice G. Mangum expressed sadness at the violence but said the threat had been properly investigated.
“I’m devastated thinking about what happened yesterday,” said Sheriff Mangum. “It could be any school. There are other schools where this has happened. There is evil in our society.
According to investigators’ reports, the investigation began in May 2023, when the FBI received anonymous tips from California and Australia that a Discord user had threatened to “shoot up a middle school” in a chat group.
The FBI said the threat included photos of guns. Investigators determined that the email address associated with the Discord account belonged to the younger Mr. Gray, who was 13 at the time and lived in Jackson County.
The username on the account was “Lanza,” a Russian spelling, an investigator wrote in a report, of the last name of the perpetrator who killed 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. .
A Jackson County Sheriff’s Office report said officers interviewed the father and son on May 20, 2023.
During the interview, both said they did not speak Russian, and the teenager denied posting the threat on Discord, telling an investigator that “he would never say something like that, even jokingly.”
He said he once had a Discord account, but deleted it. He said he had been hacked repeatedly and was “fearful that someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” an investigator wrote. During the interview, an investigator noted that the juvenile appeared calm and reserved.
Elder Mr. Gray said he has hunting rifles at home, but his son doesn’t have “constant” access. He said he would be “mad as hell” if his son had made the threat online, because “then all the guns would be gone,” according to a transcript of their conversation.
Inquest records show that the family went through a period of great upheaval.
The father told the investigator that he and his wife had separated and had been evicted from their home. He said his wife took their two young children and he and their teenage son moved into a new home.
The teenager’s aunt, Annie Brown, said in a text message on Thursday that “the adults in her life let her down,” adding that “they were actively seeking help with her mental health”.
In August 2022, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office reported that a deputy removed the father and his belongings from the home, including numerous firearms, including a black AR-15 rifle. The guns were returned to him.
Officials said the teenager used an “AR-15-style rifle” but did not say where he got the weapon. Rifles based on the AR-15 design have been used in several other mass shootings and the recent killing of former President Donald J. There has been an assassination attempt on Trump.
Investigators ultimately concluded that they could not determine the source of the threat posted on Discord.
“Due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI,” one investigator wrote, “the allegation that Colt or Collin is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be supported.”
Sheriff Mangum said his office alerted Jefferson Middle School, where the younger Mr. Gray was enrolled, but the school year had already ended. This year, the boy started as a freshman at Apalachee High School.
“It’s not like we haven’t looked into it,” Sheriff Mangum said. “It’s not just that we didn’t do anything.”
During a search of the teenager’s room after Wednesday’s shooting, police found evidence that he was interested in mass shootings, specifically the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in which 17 people were killed, according to two law enforcement officials. Enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.
President Biden, speaking in Wisconsin before a speech on clean energy Thursday, called on Congress to pass a ban on assault-style weapons, as he did. After the previous mass shooting. However, the prospects for such legislation appear slim in a divided Congress.
“We need more than thoughts and prayers,” Mr. Biden said. “Some of my Republican friends in Congress will eventually have to say: ‘Enough is enough. We have to do something.'”
Killed in a shootout on Wednesday Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulowho were both 14, and Christina Irimi and Richard Aspinwall, who was a math teacher, state officials said. Mr. Aspinwall was also the defensive coordinator of the football team.
Officials said the stampede — which took place in a hallway — could have been much worse if not for wearable panic buttons.
Wearable devices can also trigger school-wide lockdowns, according to security systems maker Centegix.
Stephen Kraienbuhl, 26, who was teaching a world history class Wednesday, said when he heard the gunshots, a lockdown alert flashed on a screen in his classroom, indicating another staff member had set off the alarm system.
Mr. Kreinbuhl and law enforcement officials also credited school resource officers at the high school for their handling of the shooting. “His response was probably less than 120 seconds,” the teacher said of one officer.
Barrow County Sheriff Judd Smith said at a news conference Wednesday that at least two school resource officers were regularly stationed at the high school, and Mr. Kreinbuhl said they were armed. When they were alerted to a possible gunman, one “stopped him and the shooter quickly realized he was going to be shot if he didn’t give up,” the sheriff said.
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