US federal investigators said Wednesday the suspect in the shooting at a high school in Georgia 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 Centre 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.
Four people were killed and at least nine were injured in the shooting at the Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. .
Two of the four dead are students while the other two are teachers, authorities said, adding that Authorities said Colt Gray will be charged with murder and tried as an adult.
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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 suspect was a student this year, had been among those informed; the school is in Winder, in neighbouring Barrow County.
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”.
Ms 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.”
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.” – The New York Times