The mother of the Georgia shooting suspect called the school 30 minutes warning of an “extreme emergency” before he allegedly opened fire there, his aunt has claimed.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of shooting dead two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta, on Wednesday.
Another teacher and a further eight students were injured but are expected to make a full recovery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Annie Brown, the teenager’s aunt, has said her sister called the school counsellor half an hour before gunfire broke out.
She told the Washington Post the boy’s mother warned of an “extreme emergency” involving her son and that they needed to find him “immediately”.
Phone records shared with the newspaper, and later confirmed by the Associated Press, show a 10-minute call was made from the family’s shared phone plan to the school at that time.
Colt Gray at Barrow County courthouse on Friday. Pic: AP
Gray appeared in court on Friday when he was charged as an adult with the murders of Mason Schermerhorn, 14, Christian Angulo, 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
His father Colin Gray, 54, also appeared in court and has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder for allowing his son to get hold of a weapon.
Colin Gray. Pic: Barrow County Sheriff’s Office
Father interviewed over shooting threats last year
Colin Gray was interviewed by police last year over threats his son made on the gaming platform Discord that he might carry out a shooting.
He told officials he had hunting guns locked in a safe in the family home – but his son did not have access to them.
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He said the teenager had struggled with his parents’ separation and often got picked on at school.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” the boy’s father said, according to a transcript of the interview.
He also mentioned his son becoming “flustered under pressure” and “not really thinking straight”.
“I don’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him,” he told investigators in May 2023.
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School shooting suspect previously investigated
But ultimately the case was closed after neither Colt nor Colin Gray were successfully linked to the Discord account the threats were made from.
There were no grounds to confiscate the family’s guns either, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office.
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Colin Gray bought his son an AR-style rifle as a gift after the pair were questioned, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
On Friday a judge ruled that the teenager would not face the death penalty because, as a juvenile, the maximum sentence he can receive is life without parole.