A 14-year-old is accused of carrying out the deadliest school shooting this year, killing four people and injuring nine others at a high school in Georgia, authorities said.
Police say the suspected shooter, Colt Gray, opened fire Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, a rural town about an hour northeast of Atlanta. Law enforcement arrived within minutes and confronted the teen, who surrendered and was soon taken into custody, officials said, adding he would be charged with murder and prosecuted as an adult.
Two students and two teachers were killed in the shooting: Mason Schermerhorn, 14, Christian Angulo, 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
The shooter used an AR-platform style weapon, according Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey, who said authorities are investigating how the gun was obtained.
Last year, local law enforcement spoke with Gray and his father about reported threats to commit a school shooting made on the online platform Discord. Investigators said conflicting evidence prevented them from identifying the author of the post.
Here's what we know so far about the alleged gunman:
Accused gunman questioned about shooting threats on Discord, FBI says
The teen was previously on the radar of law enforcement after he was tied to several online threats reported anonymously to the FBI last year, the federal agency said Wednesday.
In May 2023, the FBI received several anonymous tips from as far as California and Australia that a Discord user had threatened to "shoot up a school," according to investigative reports obtained by USA TODAY. The threats, which also contained images of guns, were forwarded to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
An email associated with the suspect's Discord account was owned by Colt Gray, according to the FBI’s analysis. The evidence also indicated that the account may have been accessed in other Georgia cities as well as in Virginia and New York.
An investigator with the sheriff's office noted that the Discord user's profile name was written in Russian and that the letters translated to Lanza, which law enforcement said was a reference to Adam Lanza, the man who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
In an interview with investigators, Gray said he had deleted his Discord account and denied posting the threats.
"Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner," the report said. One investigator described Gray, who was 13 at the time, as "calm and reserved."
Investigators interviewed Gray's father, who said that he had "hunting rifles" in the house but that his son did not have "unfettered access to them." The father also said neither he nor his son speaks Russian and he told investigators the email address associated with the Discord account was unfamiliar to him and his son.
"At this time, due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI, the allegation that [Colt or his father] is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated," an investigator with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office wrote in a report. "This case will be exceptionally cleared."
The sheriff's office notified the school where Gray was a student. However, the school year had already ended by the time they interviewed Gray and his father, investigative records said.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said in an interview with USA TODAY that she's read through the reports of the investigation and said there was nothing else investigators "could have done at the time."
"We did all we could do at the time with what he had," she said. "My heart goes out to those families, they're in my prayers. Yesterday was a devastating day."
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Gray's father told investigators his son had 'problems' in middle school
During an interview with investigators in May 2023, Gray’s father, Colin Gray, said his 13-year-old son “had some problems” at a previous middle school he attended, according to investigative records.
The father told investigators – who were looking into threats of a school shooting made online – that the situation had “gotten a lot better” since his son began attending Jefferson Middle School. He had previously attended West Jackson Middle School.
The boy’s father said he and his wife divorced and his family had been evicted from a prior address. After the eviction, he and his son moved into a new home, and his wife moved elsewhere with their two younger children, the report said.
Gray recently began attending Apalachee High School in Barrow County, which sits to the south of Jackson County, between the cities of Atlanta and Athens.
Have officials identified a motive?
Law enforcement officials on Wednesday declined to say whether they had determined what motivated the shooting and emphasized that the investigation is still in its early stages.
"This is a very, very fluid investigation," Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said in a news conference outside the school. "What you see behind us is an evil thing."
Smith, however, told reporters he was not aware of any connection between the suspected shooter and the victims.
What leads are authorities investigating?
Along with the online threats posted last year, officials said they are looking into whether the teen had any associates who were involved in the shooting as well as any interactions involving Gray, his family and child services.
Hosey told reporters there's no evidence to suggest there was any additional shooter involved in the incident, adding that authorities will pursue any leads about potential associates of the gunman.
"We're following up any potential leads through the investigation to ensure – if there are any associates involved – that we find them, we identify them," he said.
Hosey on Wednesday also told reporters that investigators are aware of "previous contacts" that the state's department of children and family services had with "the suspect and his family."
"We are pursuing that avenue as well to see if that has any connection with today's incident," he said.
Gray to make first appearance Friday
Gray was brought to the Regional Youth Detention Center in Gainesville overnight, Glenn Allen, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice told USA TODAY. Gray will appear in front of a judge virtually at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Allen said.
It was not immediately clear if Gray is being represented by an attorney.
School across Barrow County have canceled classes for the rest of the week as investigators work to determine whether there are any active threats to schools in the area and across the state of Georgia.
Contributing: John Bacon, USA TODAY; Ryne Dennis, Athens Banner-Herald
