Since a year prior to the boy’s parents splitting ways, the student and his father were the only two living together, breaking their relationship.
Colin Gray contacted a Georgia prosecutor’s detective who came to his door in May 2023 to inquire whether his brother, Colt, had posted an online threat to undertake a school shooting.
” I do n’t know anything about him saying ( expletive ) like that”, Gray told Jackson County sheriff’s investigator Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by The Associated Press. If he did,” I’m going to be jealous as hell,” he said,” and then all the artillery will go away.”
Then both Colt, 14, and Colin Gray, 54, are charged in the deaths of two kids and two instructors Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, beyond Atlanta. Nine people were hurt, seven of them shot. The Grays made their initial court appearance on Friday, and their counsel chose not to request loan right away.
The girl is charged with murder, and his dad is accused of second-degree death for providing his brother with a automatic, Mr 15-style shotgun used to remove children. According to the older Gray, the arrest warrants claim that he did it because he knew his brother “were a danger to himself and people.”
Colt Gray’s case was closed by Jackson County authorities a year ago because there was no conclusive evidence to support a claim that was made against him on a disreputable movie game website called Discord. At least a limited glimpse into a boy who struggled with his parents ‘ divorce and at the middle class his father said other people frequently taunted him at the time, according to the data from that research.
” He gets flustered and under stress. He does n’t really think straight”, Colin Gray told the investigator on May 21, 2023, recalling a discussion he’d had with the boy’s principal.
Shooting artillery and looking, he said, were numerous activities for father and son. Gray said he was encouraging the child to play video games on his Xbox and be more effective outside.
When Colt Gray killed a deer months before, his parents swelled with pride. He showed the analyst a photo on his smartphone, saying:” You see him with blood on his ears from shooting his second animal”.
” It was just the greatest moment actually”, Colin Gray said.
There’s no discuss in the detective’s review and interview record of either Gray owning an assault-style weapons. Asked if his brother had access to firearms, the papa said yes.
However, he claimed that the guns were n’t kept filled and that he had emphasized protection when instructing the child to take.
He “knows the sincerity of weapons, and what they can do,” Gray said,” and how to use them and never use them.”
In the summer of 2022, the Grays ‘ community experienced an evacuation.
On July 25 of that year, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the rented apartment on a residential cul-de-sac where Colin Gray, his family, Colt and the boy’s two younger relatives lived. A moving team was putting their possessions in the garden.
The movers found guns and hunting bow in a drawer in the master bathroom, according to a report from the Jackson County assistant. Instead of putting the weapons and ammunition outside with the family’s various items, they turned the weapons and ammunition over to the lieutenant for storage.
The lieutenant claimed that he had left copies of the weapons ‘ request forms on the front door so Gray had pick them up later at the sheriff’s office.
The cause of evacuation is never mentioned in the report. In 2023, Colin Gray admitted to paying his rent to the inspector.
It was following the expulsion, he said, that his wife left him, taking the two younger sisters with her.
Colt Gray, a parents who worked in a building company,” struggled at first with the separation and all.”
” I’m the single provider, doing higher grows there”, he told the inspector. Two days later, there was a follow-up discussion with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said by telephone:” I’m hanging off the bottom of a creating…. I’ve got a large crane hoist going, so it’s kind of loud up here”.
Colt Gray’s middle school experience was likewise difficult. When Miller interviewed the father and son, he had only finished the sixth grade.
Colin Gray claimed that the boy usually gotten raped and only had a few friends. Some kids” really ridiculed him day after day,” they said.
” I do n’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him”, Gray said. ” Comments are one factor, but you start touching him and that’s a whole different package. And it’s just gotten worse, like his playoffs were next week, and that was his last thought.
The inspector also interviewed the child, therefore 13, who was described in a statement as quiet, quiet and reserved.
He denied making any dangers, and he claimed that months before he had stopped using the Discord system, where the class danger was posted. He eventually revealed to his father that his account had been compromised.
” The only thing I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and enjoy videos”, the girl said.
Colin Gray insisted to the sheriff’s investigator that his son was n’t the type of violent threat before they would both be charged in the high school shooting a year before they would both be charged in the shooting.
” He’s not a loner, Officer Miller. Do n’t get that”, the father said, adding:” He just wants to go to school, do his own thing and he does n’t want any trouble”.
