Mother of teen suspect in deadly Georgia shooting warned school of ‘extreme emergency,’ aunt says

The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with murder in connection with the fatal shooting of four people at his Georgia high school called the school before the killings and alerted staff to an “extreme emergency” involving her son, a family member said.

Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother — Marcee Gray — texted her saying she had spoken to a school counselor and urged them to find her son “immediately” to check on him.

Brown provided screenshots of the text messages to the newspaper. The newspaper also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a 10-minute call to the school about 30 minutes before the attack began.

Gray declined to elaborate on what prompted her call, but told the Post on Saturday that she had shared it with police. She expressed regret for the “pain and suffering” endured by the victims and their families.

According to another student, a school principal was attending the teen’s math class when shots were fired that morning, the Post reported, but he was not in the classroom.

Colt Gray, 14, has been charged with murder in the killings of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, outside Atlanta, on Wednesday. His father, Colin Gray, is charged with second-degree murder for giving his son a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle.

WATCH l Apalachee High students describe terrifying moments:

2 students, 2 teachers dead in Georgia high school shooting

Two students and two teachers were killed in a shooting that injured at least nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Police said a 14-year-old suspect has been charged with murder and will be tried as an adult.

Their lawyers refused to apply for immediate bail during their first court appearance on Friday.

Brown confirmed the Post’s reporting in text messages to The Associated Press on Saturday, but declined to comment further.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the lead investigative agency, referred questions to the Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case. The office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Sunday.

Previously researched

The Georgia teen was struggling with his parents’ divorce and bullying from classmates, his father told a sheriff’s detective last year when asked if his son had posted an online threat.

“I don’t know if he said anything like that,” Colin Gray told Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by the AP.

“I get furious when he does that, and then all the weapons are gone.”

Jackson County authorities closed their investigation into Colt Gray a year ago, concluding there was no compelling evidence to link him to a threat posted on Discord, a social media site popular with video gamers. The evidence from that investigation offers at least a limited window into a boy struggling with his parents’ breakup and the high school he attended at the time, where his father said others often teased him.

Boy was bullied at school, father says

“He gets frustrated and stressed. He’s not really thinking clearly,” Colin Gray told the investigator on May 21, 2023, recalling a conversation he had with the boy’s principal.

High school was also tough for Colt Gray. He had just finished seventh grade when Miller interviewed the father and son. Colin Gray said the boy had few friends and was often bullied. Some students “made fun of him every day.”

“I don’t want him to fight anyone, but they just keep pinching him and touching him,” Gray said. “Words are one thing, but when you start touching him, that’s a whole other story. And it just escalated to the point where his finals were last week and that was the last thing on his mind.”

Son encouraged to get outside and hunt

He said shooting guns and hunting were common pastimes for father and son. Gray said he encouraged the boy to be more active outdoors and to spend less time playing video games on his Xbox. When Colt Gray killed a deer months earlier, his father was filled with pride. He showed the detective a photo on his cell phone and said, “You can see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer.”

“It was just the best day ever,” said Colin Gray.

There is no mention in the investigation report or interview transcript of Colin or Colt Gray owning an assault rifle. When asked if his son had access to firearms, the father said yes. But he said the weapons were not loaded and insisted he emphasized safety when teaching the boy to shoot.

“He knows how serious guns are and what they can do,” Gray said. “And how to use them and how not to use them.”

Family evicted from home 2 years ago

An eviction threw the Gray family into disarray in the summer of 2022. On July 25 of that year, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the rental house on a suburban cul-de-sac where Colin Gray, his wife Colt, and the boy’s two younger siblings lived. A moving crew was piling their belongings in the yard.

The Jackson County sheriff’s deputy said in a report that movers found rifles and hunting bows in a closet in the master bedroom. They gave the weapons and ammunition to the sheriff’s deputy for safekeeping, rather than leaving them outside with the family’s other belongings.

The deputy sheriff wrote that he had left copies of receipts for the guns on the front door so that Gray could pick them up later at the sheriff’s office. The reason for the eviction is not mentioned in the report. Colin Gray told the investigator in 2023 that he had paid his rent.

It was after the eviction, he said, that his wife left him, taking the two younger siblings with her. Colt Gray “had a hard time dealing with the separation and everything at first,” said the father, who worked in construction.

“I’m the only provider, I do high-rise downtown,” he told the investigator. Two days later, there was a follow-up interview with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said over the phone, “I’m on top of a building… I’ve got a big crane going, so it’s pretty noisy in here.”

WATCH | Suspect’s father charged in shooting:

Police arrest father of Georgia school shooting suspect, authorities say | Canada Tonight

The father of the 14-year-old student suspected of fatally shooting four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday has been arrested, authorities said. Police said the nine people injured in the shooting are expected to make a full recovery.

The investigator also interviewed the boy, then 13 years old. The report described him as quiet, calm and reserved.

He denied making the threats and said he had stopped using the Discord platform where the school threat was posted months earlier. He later told his father that his account had been hacked.

“All I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teen said.

A year before they were both charged in the high school shooting, Colin Gray insisted to a sheriff’s detective that his son was not the type to threaten violence.

“He’s not a loner, Officer Miller. I don’t get it,” the father said, adding, “He just wants to go to school, do his own thing and he doesn’t want any trouble.”