A memorial service is held at Apalachee High School following the school shooting on Wednesday, Saturday, September 7, 2024, in Winder, Georgia.
Mike Stewart/AP
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Mike Stewart/AP
The mother of the 14-year-old boy charged with murder in a shooting that left four people dead at his Georgia high school called the school before the killings, alerting staff to an “extreme emergency” involving her son, a relative said.
Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her that she had spoken to a school counselor and urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on the situation.
Brown provided screenshots of the text message exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that call logs from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call to the school about 30 minutes before the shooting allegedly erupted.
Brown confirmed the news to The Associated Press via text message on Saturday but declined to provide further comment.
Colt Gray, 14, has been charged with murder for killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, a suburb of Atlanta, on Wednesday. His father, Colin Gray, is charged with second-degree murder for providing his son with an AR 15 semi-automatic rifle.
Their lawyers refused to immediately request bail at their first court appearance on Friday.
Investigators previously interviewed the suspects.
When asked if his son had posted the threat online, the Georgia boy’s father told an investigator that he had been struggling with his parents’ separation and being teased by classmates.
“I don’t know anything about him saying (the expletive) like that,” Gray told Jackson County Sheriff’s Inspector Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by the AP. “I would be so mad if he did that, and then all the guns would be gone.”
Jackson County authorities closed their investigation into Colt Gray a year ago, concluding that there was no clear evidence linking him to a threat posted on Discord, a social networking site popular with video game players. Records from that investigation provide at least a glimpse into a boy who struggled with his parents’ separation and the middle school he attended at the time, where his father said others frequently taunted him.
Father says his son was bullied at school
“He became confused and under pressure. He wasn’t really thinking clearly,” Colin Gray told the coroner on May 21, 2023, recalling his discussion with the boy’s headteacher.
Middle school was also difficult for Colt Gray. He had just finished seventh grade when Miller interviewed him and his father. Colin Gray said he had few friends and was bullied regularly. Some students “just made fun of him day in and day out.”
“I didn’t want him to fight anybody, but they kept pinching him and touching him,” Gray said. “Words are one thing, but when you start touching him, it’s a whole other thing. And it just escalated to the point where it was like his finals last week and that was the last thing on his mind.”
Shooting and hunting were frequent pastimes for father and son, he said. Gray said he encouraged his son to be more active outdoors and spend less time playing video games on his Xbox. When Colt Gray killed a deer a few months ago, his father was extremely proud. He showed the investigator a photo on his cell phone and said, “You see him with blood on his cheek from shooting his first deer.”
“It was absolutely the best day ever,” said Colin Gray.
There was no mention in the coroner’s report or interview transcript of Gray owning an assault rifle. When asked if his son had access to weapons, the father said yes. But he said the guns were unloaded and insisted he had stressed safety when teaching the boy to shoot.
“He has a clear understanding of the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Gray said.
Family evicted in 2022
An eviction upended the Gray family in the summer of 2022. On July 25 of that year, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the suburban cul-de-sac rental home where Colin Gray, his wife, Colt, and the boy’s two younger siblings lived. A moving crew was unloading their belongings in the yard.
A Jackson County sheriff’s deputy said in a report that movers found guns and hunting bows in the master bedroom closet. They turned the weapons and ammunition over to the deputy for safekeeping, rather than leaving them outside with the family’s other belongings.
The deputy wrote that he left copies of receipts for the weapons at the front door so Gray could retrieve them later at the sheriff’s office. The reason for the eviction was not mentioned in the report. Colin Gray told investigators in 2023 that he had paid his rent.
After he was fired, his wife left him, taking their two younger siblings with her, he said. Colt Gray “struggled with the breakup and everything at first,” said the father, who works in construction.
“I was the only supplier, working on high-rise buildings in the city centre,” he told the investigator. Two days later, there was a follow-up interview with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said on the phone: “I was hanging on the top of a building. … I had a big crane working, so it was quite noisy in here.”
The boy was described as quiet.
Investigators also interviewed the boy, then 13, described in the report as quiet, calm and reserved.
He denied making any threats and said he had stopped using the Discord platform where the school’s threat was posted months ago. He later told his father that his account had been hacked.
“I only have TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teenager said.
A year before the two were charged in the high school shooting, Colin Gray assured a sheriff’s investigator that his son was not the type to threaten violence.
“He’s not a loner, Officer Miller. Don’t get me wrong,” the father said, adding: “He just wants to go to school, do his job, and not get in trouble.”
