Authorities in the state of Georgia arrested the father of a 14-year-old suspect Thursday in connection with Wednesday’s school shooting that left four dead and nine injured.
The 54-year-old man was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said in a social media post.
According to GBI Director Chris Hosey, the allegations were based on the father knowingly allowing his son to possess the weapon.
“Her charges are directly linked to her son’s actions and allowing him to possess a firearm,” Hosey added.
2023 investigation found no grounds for arrest
Both suspects were questioned by local authorities in neighboring Jackson County last year about an online school shooting threat, but there was no probable cause for their arrest, the FBI said Wednesday.
In that 2023 investigation, the father said he had hunting rifles in the home but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them. The son denied making the online threats, the FBI added.
Jackson County Sheriff Janice Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing at that time to warrant bringing charges.
Holding gun-owning parents accountable for school violence
The charges against the father follow the mother’s sentencing in April and are believed to have held the parents legally responsible for their children’s actions in the school shooting.
In that case, the parents of a teenager who shot and killed four classmates at an Oxford high school in 2021 were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder.
A jury convicted them of failing to secure guns in their home and ignoring warning signs that their son was mentally unwell. Experts and gun safety advocates said their trials were an important step toward holding gun-owning parents more accountable for school violence perpetrated by their children.
dh/sms (AP, Routers)
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