FBI claims the bureau has not directly investigated the suspect behind this week’s tragic Georgia high school mass shooting.
The student shooter is accused Apalachee High School shooting The FBI was anonymously notified in 2023 on Wednesday about the online threats and a “potential threat to shoot up a middle school” in a group chat on the messaging app Discord.
Fox News Digital spoke with FBI representatives in Atlanta, who said the bureau did not interview the suspect and did not go to his home. Instead, the FBI provided information from an anonymous tip to the Jackson County Sheriff.
Local law enforcement officials with the sheriff’s department conducted a thorough investigation and interviewed the suspect’s father, which was documented in a report that could not substantiate the threats.
During the investigation, the suspect “expressed concern that someone was accusing him of threatening to shoot up the school, saying he would never say something like that, even jokingly,” according to the interview report.
An officer investigating the anonymous tips discovered that the information sent to the FBI was communicated through various IP addresses around the world: Palmdale, California; Los Angeles, California; and Cockburn, Australia. It also reviewed email addresses and phone numbers related to the case — as well as user profiles linked to the threats.
The profile name, written in Russian, refers to the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.
“[The Apalachee suspect] “Said he stopped using Discord because too many people kept hacking his account, and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” according to the report.
“At this time, due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI, it is alleged that [the Apalachee shooting suspect or his father] It cannot be proven that it is the user behind the Discord account who made the threat,” the investigating officer wrote in 2023. “This case will be cleared exceptionally.”
An FBI source told Fox News Digital that if there is no immediate threat to life, it is protocol to notify local law enforcement, provide information and give them investigative tips.
“There’s only so much you can do when you get those alerts,” former FBI agent Rob D’Amico told “Fox & Friends First” on Thursday.
“Local officials went out and interviewed the father, interviewed the son — he denied making those online threats,” D’Amico continued. “The father said the son did not have unfettered access to weapons. They did what they could, and then they left because there was no probable cause to take other action.
Spokesperson for Georgia Bureau of Investigation Fox News tells Digital that the suspected shooter’s parents “have been cooperative up to this point.”
The comments came in response to questions about whether authorities were investigating the shooter’s parents following Wednesday’s attack, which left four dead and nine others wounded.
The suspect has been booked into the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, according to the release WSB-TV. The Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center is located about an hour north of Apalachee High School in Winder.
Matthew Fagiana, retired police sergeant and law enforcement consultant, told Fox News Digital That responding officers are zeroing in on the 14-year-old suspect’s past and motive early in the investigation.
“Things like the timeline of events. The suspect’s chronological history leading up to the shooting, interactions with victims, the existence of any signs of violent behavior, statements or social media posts that might help them develop a motive, and recent internet history,” he said.
“And that, of course, only scratches the surface of the investigation,” he added.
Fagiana noted that responding agencies, including the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, are combing the scene at Apalachee High School to build an “accurate picture” of the suspect’s route through the school.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman, Sarah Rumph-Whiten and Stephanie Price contributed to this report.
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