Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect who killed four people at a high school shooting in the US state of Georgia has been arrested.
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation(GBI), the 54-year-old has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, CNN reported.
Chris Hosey, GBI Director, said on Thursday evening at a news conference that the charges were directly connected to his son’s actions and “allowing him to possess a weapon”.
The son, Colt Gray, has been charged with four counts of felony murder, according to charging documents obtained by CNN. He is expected to be tried as an adult, the GBI and Barrow County sheriff have said.
Colin Gray told investigators this week he had purchased the gun used in the killings as a holiday present for his son in December 2023, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
A source told CNN the AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas present. The timeline the teen’s father provided to authorities would put the gun purchase months after authorities first contacted Gray and his family to investigate school shooting threats made online.
The junior Gray is accused of killing two teachers and two students in Wednesday’s shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta.
He is due in court on Friday charged – as an adult – with four counts of murder.
In May 2023, the FBI alerted local police to online threats about a school shooting, associated with an email address linked to the suspect.
A sheriff’s deputy went to interview the boy, who was 13 at the time.
His father told police he had guns in the house, but his son did not have unsupervised access to them, the FBI said in a statement on Wednesday.
Colin Gray also told police his son was getting picked on at school and had been struggling with his parents’ separation.
Police records reveal that the boy’s mother and father were in the process of divorcing, and he was staying with his father during the split.
The teen often hunted with his father, who told police he had photographed his son with a deer’s blood on his cheeks.
