The father of Georgia school shooter Colt Gray was arrested on charges including murder after it was revealed that he purchased the AR-15-style rifle the 14-year-old used to shoot dead four people on campus.
Colin Gray, 54, has been taken into custody by local authorities and charged with two counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Officials confirmed in a press conference that the charges stem from Colin ‘knowingly allowing’ his son to have access to the firearm used in the shooting.
The 14-year-old was apprehended on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, just minutes after he killed two students and two teachers with the semi-automatic weapon.
The dad allegedly purchased the deadly weapon as a Christmas present to his son – just months after they received an initial visit from the FBI.
Colin Gray (pictured left), 54, has been taken into custody by local authorities and charged with two counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children
Officials confirmed in a press conference that the charges stem from Colin ‘knowingly allowing’ his son to have access to the firearm used in the shooting
The family home was raided on Wednesday afternoon, with FBI investigators seizing firearms and evidence.
Neighbors saw Colin return to the family home on Wednesday evening, though it is unclear if he handed himself into authorities.
A neighbor told DailyMail.com that they were ‘terrified’ following the new charges, adding that the family had ‘kept themselves to themselves’ and not integrated with the community in their two years at the property.
The arrest came after sources claimed that the father-of-three bought his 14-year-old son the assault rifle used in the shooting as a Christmas gift in 2023.
This was just months after the teenager and his father were interviewed by local law enforcement in connection with online threats about carrying out a school shooting made on the gaming social-media platform Discord, according to investigators.
The teen was interviewed after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, ‘had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.’ The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.
The FBI’s tip pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address linked to Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy said ‘he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,’ according to the investigator’s report.
The interview transcript quotes the teen as saying: ‘I promise I would never say something where …’ with the rest of that denial listed as inaudible.
Colt Gray was given the gun he used to allegedly shoot dead four people at his Georgia high school as a Christmas present from his father
The investigator wrote that no arrests were made because of ‘inconsistent information’ on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a digital evidence trail indicating it had been accessed in different Georgia cities as well as Buffalo, New York.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.
‘We did not drop the ball at all on this,’ Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. ‘We did all we could do with what we had at the time.’
The Discord account had a user name written in Russian, and the translation of the letters spelled out the name Lanza, referencing Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school tragedy, officers said.
Gray denied he was the author of the threats, telling police he’d shut down his Discord after being repeatedly hacked. He expressed concerns that someone would make those accusations about him.