Colt Gray has admitted ‘I did it’ to investigators despite being read his Miranda rights after he was arrested for the shooting death of four people at a Georgia high school.
The 14-year-old was arrested Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, minutes after authorities say he opened fire on students and teachers.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said the boy was ‘still talking’ after being read his rights by authorities, according to CNN.
Gray’s father, Colin, 54, has been detained by local authorities and charged with two counts of murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of child cruelty.
Officials confirmed at a press conference that the allegations stemmed from Colin ‘knowingly allowing’ his son to have access to the firearm used in the shooting.
Colt Gray admitted ‘I did it’ to investigators despite being read his Miranda rights after he was arrested for fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said the boy was ‘still talking’ after being read his rights by authorities
Gray was given the gun he used to shoot dead four people at a Georgia high school as a Christmas present from his father a month after they were questioned by the FBI over alleged threats.
Colin Gray’s father has told authorities he bought the boy a gun as a Christmas present. Colin Gray has not commented publicly on the shooting.
This comes just a month after the teenager and his father were interviewed by local law enforcement in connection with online threats about school shootings made on the gaming social media platform Discord, according to investigators.
The teenager was interviewed after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, ‘may have been threatened, to pick up the middle school tomorrow.’ The threats were made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
An FBI tip pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address associated with Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy said ‘he would never say something like that, even jokingly,’ according to the investigator’s report.
The transcript of the interview quoted the teenager as saying: ‘I promise I won’t say anything where…’ with other denials being inaudible.
The investigators wrote that no arrests were made due to ‘inconsistent information’ on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a digital trail of evidence showing that it had been accessed in different Georgia cities as well as Buffalo, New York.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the reports from May 2023 and found nothing to support the allegations.
“We’re not dropping the ball on this,” Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. ‘We did everything we could with what we had at the time.’
The Discord account has a username written in Russian, and the translation of the letters says the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school tragedy, officials said.
Gray denied he was the author of the threats, telling police he was shutting down Discord after being hacked repeatedly. He expressed concern that someone would expose him.
The 14-year-old was arrested Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, minutes after authorities say he opened fire on students and teachers.
A large police presence descended on Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday after officials said a student opened fire, injuring nine and killing four.
‘He knew the seriousness of weapons and what they could do, and how to use them and not use them,’ his father, Colin Gray, said, according to a transcript obtained by the sheriff’s office.
Colin reportedly assured officials that he would be ‘mad as hell’ if he found out the allegations about his son making threats were true, and that ‘all the guns (would) be gone.’
Online, his aunt swore ‘full throttle blood’ as she claimed she had been ‘abused’ all her life. The comment was deleted last night after a backlash.
Sheriff’s investigators closed the case after not being able to substantiate that one of the Grays was connected to the Discord account, and did not find grounds to seek the court needed to confiscate the family’s gun, according to the police report released by the sheriff’s office on Friday.
Gray appeared in the booking photo with long hair that had been dyed blonde – a far cry from the smiling, baby boy he had pictured in his high school yearbook just two years earlier.
The boy reportedly had an obsession with notorious school shooters such as Parkland, Florida killer Nikolas Cruz.
Two students and two teachers were killed in the school building when he dropped an AR-style weapon.
Students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, and teachers Richard Aspenwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, were named as the deceased.
Mason Schermerhorn, 14, an autistic student at Apalachee High School, was the first victim to be identified. Christian Angulo, 14, was also killed in the senseless shooting
Teacher Richard Aspinwall was named as one of the four victims of the shooting. Christina Irimie was also identified as a victim
When police searched the teenager’s Georgia home after the bloodbath, they reportedly found clues that the teenager was ‘obsessed’ with mass shootings – particularly the Parkland massacre in 2018, which left 17 people dead.
Gray became known to the FBI after several tips came in last year.
The boy remains in custody in Georgia, pending his first court appearance, which is scheduled for Friday morning. They will be charged as adults, the sheriff said.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by school resource officers at the scene.
Sheriff Smith announced that Wednesday was Gray’s first ‘real day’ at Apalachee High.
He said, “He’s a new student at Barrow County School, he’s registered two weeks before. It’s his second day at school. He’s been there before, he left early, that day and it’s his first real full day.’
According to law enforcement, Gray opened fire at approximately 10:23 a.m., killing at least 13 people as a frantic scene took over the school.
Images show students streaming out onto campus as terrified parents race to find their children, with one mother describing the scene outside the school as pure ‘chaos.’
Horrifying details from inside a classroom have emerged – depicting the chaos students were left with when shots were fired this morning
A mother described the scene outside the school as ‘chaos’
A junior at the school, Lyela Sayerath, said she sat next to Colt Gray in algebra class minutes before he started the shooting spree.
He told CNN that Colt left the classroom at the start of class at 9:45 a.m., about 30 minutes before the active shooter alert sounded.
Gray didn’t take his bathroom pass, he said, so he thought he was just skipping class — before a loudspeaker announcement told teachers to check email.
Shortly after, Sayerath said Gray returned outside the classroom, and the student got up to open the door for him before jumping back in the presence of his gun.
‘I guess he saw we weren’t going to let him in. And I guess the class next to me, the door was open, I think he just started shooting in the class,’ she said.
Sayerath said Gray continued to fire several bullets ‘one after another’, adding: ‘When we heard, most people just dropped to the floor and kind of crawled in the area like piled on top of each other.’
Sayerath said his friend was in the next class and witnessed the shooting, which left him ‘shaken’. ‘They saw people being shot. He has blood. He was limping a bit. He looks scary,’ she added.
As information flooded in on the school shooting – officially the deadliest in the history of Georgia – students and parents expressed shock at the horror that unfolded.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by law enforcement, and ‘give up and get on the ground’
One mother, Erin Clark, shared text exchanges with her son Ethan since learning there was an active shooter at their school.
He wrote: ‘school shooting rn (now). I’m scared. I’m not kidding.’
His mother immediately answered, assuring him that he would be on his way to work. In a heartbreaking response, Ethan wrote: ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too. Where are you?’ Clark said. Ethan tells him he’s in class, adding ‘someone’s dead.’
Heartbroken students have come outside the school grounds on Thursday to mourn the tragedy.
A makeshift memorial has been made using wreaths and flowers. On Thursday, families and students stopped by the somber scene to pay their respects to the lives lost in the tragedy.
President Joe Biden issued a statement condemning gun violence after the tragedy.
He said: ‘What should have been a back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now become another reminder of how gun violence continues to ravage our community.
Heartbroken students came outside the school in a steady stream Thursday to mourn the tragedy
On Thursday, families and students stopped by the somber scene to pay their respects to the lives lost in the tragedy
‘Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of reading and writing.
‘We cannot continue to accept this as normal.’
Biden called on Congress to say ‘enough’ and pass new gun safety legislation, describing gun violence as an ‘epidemic.’