Reuters

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Colt Gray, the teen suspected of killing four people in a school shooting in Georgia, pictured in a school photo in 2022.

Georgia state officials have arrested the father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspected of killing four people and wounding nine at Apalachee High School on Wednesday.

“In co-ordination with District Attorney Brad Smith, the GBI has arrested Colin Gray, age 54, in connection to the shooting at Apalachee High School. Colin is Colt Gray’s father,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday on X.

The father was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.

Both Grays had been questioned by officials in neighbouring Jackson County in 2023 in connection with an online threat to commit a school shooting but there was no probable cause for their arrest, the FBI said on Wednesday.

The booking photo of Colt Gray, the suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting, on September 5.
The booking photo of Colt Gray, the suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting, on September 5.

In that 2023 probe, the father said he had hunting guns in the house but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them, and the son denied making the threats online, the FBI said.

Georgia state and Barrow County investigators say the younger Gray used an “AR platform-style weapon”, or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the attack in which two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed.

It remained unclear how the shooter obtained the weapon.

The shooter’s ability to obtain the semiautomatic rifle, any signs warning that he would carry out a shooting and his motive are focuses for investigators digging into the first US campus mass shooting since the start of the school year.

Jackson County sheriff’s investigators closed the 2023 case after being unable to substantiate whether either Gray was connected to the Discord account through which the threats were made. They did not find grounds to seek a court order to confiscate the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office on Thursday.

“This case was worked, and at the time the boy was 13, and it wasn’t enough to substantiate,” Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said in an interview.

“If we get a judge’s order or we charge somebody, we take firearms for safekeeping.”

The younger Gray was taken into custody shortly after Wednesday’s shootings. He would be charged and tried as an adult, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

He was being held without bond at Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Centre, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice communications director Glenn Allen said.

His arraignment is set for later today before a Georgia Superior Court judge in Barrow County by video.

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