By Brooke Mallory, OAN Staff
Thursday, September 5, 2024 3:43 PM
Federal authorities have confirmed that a 14-year-old boy accused of shooting and killing four people, two students and two teachers, at a Georgia high school on Wednesday was also being investigated for making previous threats to carry out school shootings.
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According to a joint statement from the FBI's Atlanta field office and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, the suspect, Colt Gray, who was 13 years old at the time, was involved in sending threatening messages that were posted online last year.
“The threats, which also included pictures of guns, stated that he would carry out a school shooting in the future but did not state where or when he would carry out the shooting.” TMZ Reported.
The statement said law enforcement officials spoke within a day with the shooter, who was not named in the statement but previously identified by local authorities as Gray, about the threat.
The statement added that the suspect denied making the threats. When questioned by police, the father said there were hunting rifles in the house but that his son never had access to them unsupervised.
Authorities advised nearby schools to keep an eye on the suspect, despite not having sufficient grounds for an arrest, according to the statement.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said investigators are looking into a potential connection between Wednesday's shooting and the 2023 threat.
Hosey said the shooting was reported about 10:20 a.m. near Apalachee High School, about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta. Authorities said the boy turned himself in after being “encompassed” by sheriff's deputies acting as school resource officers.
“The shooter quickly realized that if he didn't let up, it would end up as an officer-involved shooting,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said at a news conference, using the acronym “OIS,” which stands for “officer-involved shooting.”
“He fell to the ground and officers took him into custody,” Smith said.
Four people were killed after the gunman opened fire with what Hosey described as an “AR platform type weapon.”
The victims were identified by investigators as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimy.
The school's website lists both Aspinwall and Irimy as math teachers. Aspinwall also served as the defensive coordinator for the football team.
Nine other people were wounded in the shooting, including eight teachers and one student, police said in a statement, without naming the victims.
Hosey argued that even though the suspect is a minor, he was charged with four counts of murder and should be tried in court as an adult.
It remains unclear why the suspect fired the shots, Smith said, adding that it's unclear if he had a specific target in mind or was just shooting at anyone nearby. The juvenile is being questioned by detectives from both the sheriff's office and state law enforcement, the sheriff said.
Apalachee High School is part of the Barrow County School District, whose superintendent announced the school would be closed for the rest of the week as the district “cooperates fully in getting answers to the many questions about what happened here.”
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris used the tragic incident to further demonize firearms at a rally in New Hampshire, saying “the epidemic of gun violence must end.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump took to his online platform, Truth Social, to condemn the attacker, calling the 14-year-old a “sick and psychopathic”
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