The teenage suspect in the Georgia mass shooting was on the FBI’s radar and was quizzed by police over online threats about a potential school shooting one year before the attack, it has been revealed.
Colt Gray, 14, has been named as the suspected gunman in the shooting at Apalachee High School in the city of Winder on Wednesday which left four people – two students and two teachers – dead.
Gray, who is accused of carrying out the attack using an AR-style rifle, surrendered to authorities on the scene and will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, authorities said.
Now it has emerged that the FBI and the police had interviewed Gray and his father in May 2023 over “online threats to commit a school shooting,” which contained photographs of guns, the FBI’s Atlanta office said in a statement.
After receiving several anonymous tips, the FBI confirmed the online threats originated from Georgia and referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriffs’ Office.
Police allegedly traced the online threats to Gray, then 13 years old, and interviewed him and his father, who said he had guns in the house.
“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.
“The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
Following the interview, police determined there was “no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action”, the statement added.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Chris Hosey confirmed authorities are investigating links between the 2023 threats and Wednesday’s shooting.
“This is not recent,” he told a press conference on Wednesday night. “This is in the past, but we wanted to bring that to your attention because we are pursuing that, working with the FBI on this in any connection to that incident that could be connected to today’s incident as well.”
It was also revealed that Gray and his family had contact with the department of family and children’s services in the area, which authorities are pursuing as another a line of inquiry.
Gray has been described by a classmate as “quiet” student who would often “skip class”.
Student Lyela Sayarath told CNN that she wasn’t surprised when she heard Gray was the suspected gunman because he fitted the description of a shooter.
Sayarath, who said she was sitting next to Gray in their algebra class just moments before the shooting, recalled how he left the room around 9.45am. He didn’t take the bathroom pass with him, so she assumed he was skipping class.
“He wasn’t there most times,” Sayarath said. “He either wouldn’t be there or skip class. But even when he would’ve talked, it was one-word answers and short statements.”
Tributes are now pouring in for the four victims, named as Mason Schermerhorn, Christian Angulo, both 14, and math teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.