Anonymous tips were sent to the FBI as far away as Australia last May, warning that a user on the social media platform, Discord, had threatened to possibly “shoot up a middle school” in a chat group. Authorities were led to a 13-year-old boy living in Jackson County, Ga.
A report from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, obtained by The New York Times, described how investigators investigated but were unable to definitively link the threats to the teenager, who remains in custody after the shooting at his high school in Winder Wednesday morning. , Ga. He is accused of killing two students and two teachers.
Hours after the shooting, the FBI disclosed that law enforcement had investigated an online threat made in May 2023. But the sheriff’s office report tells more about how authorities discovered the teenager’s post and why — after interviewing the boy and his father — they took no further action than warning his middle school.
According to the report, the FBI received several tips from users with Internet addresses in Palmdale, California, Los Angeles and Cockburn, a city in Western Australia, including posts made in a group chat on Discord. The email associated with the account belonged to Colt Gray, who was accused of shooting at his school.
Investigators found that the username on the Discord account was written in Russian. “The translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza,” the investigator wrote in his report, adding that it was the last name of the perpetrator of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., of 20 students and six students. Teachers were killed.
In interviews with investigators, both Mr. Gray and his father, Colin Gray, said they did not speak Russian, and the boy denied authoring the threats. He said he previously had a Discord account, but had deleted it, and claimed he had been hacked repeatedly and “was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” an investigator wrote.
According to the report, the teenager told the investigator, “He would never say something like that, even jokingly.” During the interview, an investigator noted that the boy was quiet and had a reserved demeanor.
His father told an investigator that he and his wife had divorced and had been kicked out of the house. He said his wife took their two young children and he and his son moved into a new home.
The father also told an investigator that his son “experienced some problems at West Jackson Middle School and now that he’s going to Jefferson Middle School it’s great.”
Colin Gray also told investigators that he had hunting rifles in the home, but that his son did not have “unfettered” access to them.
Jackson County Sheriff Janice G. Mangum said Thursday morning that his office had notified Jefferson Middle School, where Mr. Gray was enrolled, but that classes had already ended for the school year. This year, Mr. Gray started as a freshman at Apalachee High School in Winder, which is in neighboring Barrow County.
After interviewing the father and son on May 20, 2023, investigators decided they had exhausted their efforts.
“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 in an interview Thursday that she was distressed about the violence at Apalachee High School, but also said her office had thoroughly investigated last year’s threat and conducted the investigation as far as possible.
“It’s not like we haven’t looked into it,” she said. “It’s not just that we didn’t do anything.”
She added: “I’m devastated thinking about what happened yesterday. It can be any school. There are other schools where this has happened. There is evil in our society.
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