Georgia high school shooting suspect was previously interviewed after FBI received reports of online threats
New details are emerging about the 14-year-old student accused of killing four people and wounding nine others in Wednesday's shooting at Apalachee High School in northern Georgia, including what investigators learned when they interviewed the suspect last year. As new information comes out about the suspect, Colt Gray, officials continue to investigate how the teen obtained the gun used in the attack and what led up to the latest school shooting in the U.S.
The suspect has been charged with four counts of felony murder, and District Attorney Brad Smith, whose district includes the Barrow County high school, said Friday that more charges are expected to be filed.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday evening that the suspect's father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, was arrested on murder charges in connection with the shooting. He was taken into custody on two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.
"These charges stem from Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon," GBI Director Chris Hosey said in a news conference Thursday night.
CBS News learned that police and federal agents are investigating if the weapon used in the shooting was purchased by the teen's father as a gift for his son in 2023, according to four federal law enforcement sources close to the investigation.
A search of the suspect's home following the shooting also showed that the suspect had an interest in previous school shootings, CBS News has learned.
The teen appeared in court Friday morning for a brief hearing where Judge Currie Mingledorff II advised him of his rights and told him that the maximum penalty for the four counts of felony murder he's facing is life in prison without parole or life in prison with the possibility of parole. The judge initially told the teen he was also possibly facing the death penalty, but then said he wasn't because he's under 18 years old.
The teen spoke very little during the hearing, responding to questions by saying, "Yes, sir."
Earlier tips about threats
More than a year ago, tips about online posts threatening a school shooting led Georgia police to interview a 13-year-old boy, but investigators didn't have enough evidence for an arrest. On Wednesday, that same boy opened fire at his high school in north Georgia, officials said.
The suspect has been charged as an adult in the deaths of Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14; and instructors Richard Aspinwall, 39; and Christina Irimie, 53, GBI Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference.
At least nine other people — eight students and one teacher at the school in Winder, about an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta — were taken to hospitals with injuries. At least seven of those patients were treated and released by late Thursday, while at least one other remained hospitalized in stable condition, hospital officials said.
The suspect is currently being held at the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice spokesperson Glenn Allen told CBS News on Thursday.
Barrage of gunshots
Armed with an assault-style rifle, the teen turned the gun on students in a hallway at the school when classmates refused to open the door for him to return to his algebra classroom, classmate Lyela Sayarath said.
The teen earlier left the second-period algebra classroom, and Sayarath figured the quiet student who recently transferred was skipping school again.
But he returned later and wanted back in the classroom. Some students went to open the locked door but instead backed away.
"I'm guessing they saw something, but for some reason they didn't open the door," Sayarath said.
When she looked at him through a window in the door, she saw the student turn and heard a barrage of gunshots.
"It was about 10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back," she said.
The math students ducked onto the floor and sporadically crawled around, looking for a safe corner to hide.
Two school resource officers encountered the shooter within minutes after a report of shots fired went out, Hosey said. The teen immediately surrendered and was taken into custody.
According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, law enforcement was notified of the threat thanks to a new security system that had been installed about a week earlier. Smith noted there were three school resource officers on campus at the time of the shooting.
Georgia law prohibits minors from possessing handguns, but there is no minimum age to possess a rifle or shotgun in Georgia.
Teen previously interviewed over FBI tips
The teen had been interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips in May 2023 about online threats to commit an unspecified school shooting, the agency said in a statement.
FBI Atlanta said on social media Wednesday night that the FBI's National Threat Operations Center found that the posts came from Georgia, and "the FBI's Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office," which is adjacent to Barrow County.
The sheriff's office interviewed the then-13-year-old and his father, who said there were hunting guns in the house but the teen did not have unsupervised access to them. The teen also denied making any online threats.
According to reports from the sheriff's office released Thursday, the threats were made using an account on the online chatting app Discord. The profile name for the account was written in Russian, which was translated to the last name of the shooter in the deadly 2012 attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, according to the sheriff's office.
The teen told investigators he deleted the Discord account because it kept getting hacked, according to the sheriff's office reports.
Local police records obtained by CBS News described him as "reserved" and "calm" during the interview with Jackson County sheriff's deputies.
Those records also indicate Gray's parents were going through a messy divorce at the time, with his mother taking custody of two other children in the divorce while the suspect stayed with his father.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum, whose deputies questioned the suspect in 2023, told CBS News Thursday that "it's sad that we have that kind of evil in our society."
In the incident report, a deputy reported that the teen "assured me he never made any threats to shoot up any school."
Mangum doesn't believe that 2023 interview was a "missed opportunity."
"No, I think he (the deputy) did all he could do with what he had at that time," Mangum said.
The sheriff's office interview also revealed that the teen and his father had been evicted from their home in early 2023. The father also told investigators that the teen had been having problems at middle school but that things had gotten better when he went to a different middle school.
The father told investigators he'd gone to the new school many times to keep track of his son and described his conversations with school officials.
"He doesn't really think straight, can we just, you know, just kind of put your arms around him get him through seventh grade," the father said, according to the transcript. "I just wanna make sure he's good. Like I mean we're up there all the time talking to the school."
The father also told the investigators his son was getting picked on at school.
The sheriff's office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the teen, but there was no probable cause for arrest or additional action, the FBI said.
Hosey said the state Division of Family and Children's Services also had previous contact with the teen and will investigate whether that has any connection with the shooting. Local news outlets reported that law enforcement on Wednesday searched the teen's family home in Bethlehem, Georgia, east of the high school.
"All the students that had to watch their teachers and their fellow classmates die, the ones that had to walk out of the school limping, that looked traumatized," Sayarath said, "that's the consequence of the action of not taking control."
Authorities were still looking into how the teen obtained the gun used in the shooting and got it into the school with about 1,900 students in Barrow County, a rapidly suburbanizing area on the edge of metro Atlanta's ever-expanding sprawl.
Disturbing trend
It was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to active shooter drills in classrooms. But they have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Before Wednesday, there had been 29 mass killings in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as incidents in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
On Wednesday evening, hundreds gathered in Jug Tavern Park in downtown Winder for a vigil. Volunteers handed out candles and also water, pizza and tissues. Some knelt as a Methodist minister led the crowd in prayer after a Barrow County commissioner read a Jewish prayer of mourning.
Christopher Vasquez, 15, said he attended the vigil because he needed to feel grounded and be in a safe place.
He was in band practice when the lockdown order was issued. He said it felt like a regular drill as students lined up to hide in the band closet.
"Once we heard banging at the door and the SWAT (team) came to take us out, that's when I knew that it was serious," he said. "I just started shaking and crying."
He finally settled down once he was at the football stadium. "I just was praying that everyone I love was safe," he said.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated which agency interviewed the suspect in 2023 and has been corrected.
