The father of the boy suspected in the Georgia school shooting has been arrested, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced.
Collin Gray, 54, was arrested by police in connection with the shooting at Apalachee High School. Collin is the father of 14-year-old Colt Gray, who is suspected of shooting and killing two students and two teachers with an assault rifle at the school on Wednesday.
He has been charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, according to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
“His charges are directly related to his son’s actions and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey told reporters Thursday night.
“What we’re facing is a heartbreaking story of a young man bringing a gun to a school and committing a heinous act, taking people’s lives and hurting them not only physically but emotionally,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said at a news conference.
The boy was charged as an adult in connection to the deaths of students at the school, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimy, 53, Hosey said.
At least nine other people — seven students and two teachers — were taken to hospital with injuries and are all expected to make a full recovery, Smith said.
Collin Gray is being held at the Barrow County Detention Center.
Georgia police interviewed the suspect more than a year ago after receiving a tip about online posts threatening to commit a school shooting, but at the time, police did not have sufficient probable cause to arrest him, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
During a 2023 investigation, the father said there were hunting guns in the home but his son never had access to them unsupervised, and the son denied making the online threats, according to the FBI.
Georgia and Barrow County investigators say Gray used an “AR platform weapon,” a semi-automatic rifle, in the attack that killed two teachers and two 14-year-old students.
It remains unclear how the gunman obtained the weapon.
Investigators have yet to comment on a motive for the first mass shooting on a U.S. campus since the new semester began.
According to a police report released Thursday by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, investigators closed the case because they were unable to establish that Gray was connected to the Discord account where the threats were made and did not find grounds to seek a court order to confiscate the family’s firearms.
“The case was under investigation, but the boy was 13 at the time, so there wasn’t enough evidence to support it,” Jackson County Sheriff Janice Mangum said in an interview. “When we get a judge’s order or when we indict someone, we seize the firearms for safekeeping.”
Glenn Allen, public information director for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, said Thursday that Gray’s son was taken into custody shortly after the shooting and is being held without bail at the Gainesville Regional Juvenile Detention Center.
His arraignment is scheduled to take place Friday morning before a Barrow County, Georgia, Superior Court judge via video camera.
Parents typically aren’t held criminally responsible when their children shoot someone, but a recent high-profile case shows parents may be prosecuted in the future. In November 2023, Deja Taylor of Virginia was sentenced to 21 months in prison on federal charges in the January shooting of her then-6-year-old son by a juvenile delinquent.
Gray’s arrest also comes months after the unprecedented convictions of the parents of a Michigan high school student who shot and killed four students on Nov. 30. Jennifer Crumbly was convicted of four counts of manslaughter in February. Her husband, James Crumbly, was convicted the following month of the same charges. Both were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
“We didn’t really think much about what precedent this case might set,” Karen McDonald, the Oakland County prosecutor who prosecuted the Crumbleys, told CNN on Thursday. “We hoped that at the very least, the details of this case being widely publicized might make parents think twice and reconsider.”
“It’s infuriating that this is so easily preventable and still happens,” she continued.
This article was corrected on September 6, 2024. A previous version said Deja Taylor was sentenced to 21 years, not 21 months.