Federal investigators said Wednesday that the suspect in the shooting at a Georgia high school had been interviewed more than a year ago by local law enforcement officials in connection to threats made online about a school shooting.
The authorities were led to the suspect, Colt Gray, who was 13 at the time, after the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips in May 2023 reporting threats that had been posted on an online gaming site warning of a school shooting at “an unidentified location and time,” according to statements from the FBI field office in Atlanta and local law enforcement officials. The threats included photographs of guns.
Investigators from the sheriff’s office in Jackson County, Georgia, interviewed the suspect and his father, the FBI said. His father told investigators that he had hunting guns in the house, but said that his son did not have unsupervised access to the weapons. The suspect denied making the threats.
The FBI said that the Jackson County authorities alerted local schools “for continued monitoring of the subject”. But it was unclear whether officials at Apalachee High School, where the shooting took place and the suspect was a student this year, had been among those informed; the school is in Winder, Georgia, in neighbouring Barrow County.
The Grenfell inquiry report brought truth, but only prosecutions will bring justice
The guru showing Alternative for Germany how to use social media to win votes and influence young people
‘Inadequate’: One-word school ratings abolished in England after tragedy involving distraught headteacher
State election results weaken Olaf Scholz and have ramifications for all of Germany
The FBI, in its statement, said that investigators lacked probable cause to arrest the teenager or “take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels”.
In a separate statement, Janis G Mangum, the sheriff in Jackson County, said that a “thorough investigation was conducted” but that “the gaming site threats could not be substantiated”.
Mangum cautioned residents to be careful of posts containing misinformation circulating online. “My phone is blowing up with messages from people about social media postings about other possible incidents,” she said in a note on Facebook. “To my knowledge, there is not a list indicating any of this.”
Four people were killed and at least nine were injured on Wednesday in the shooting at a high school outside Atlanta where students ran to seek safety in a football stadium, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday evening.
Authorities said Colton Gray will be charged with murder and tried as an adult. Two of the two dead are students while the other two are teachers, authorities also said.
Shots were fired on Wednesday morning, and officers swarmed the campus of Apalachee High School as parents raced to find out if their children were safe at the school in Winder, Georgia.
Kamala Harris condemned the deadly shooting, calling it a “senseless tragedy” and saying “we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country”.
Donald Trump called the shooter a “sick and deranged monster”, adding: “Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA.” – The New York Times