Father of US school massacre suspect charged with murder

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing four people at a Georgia high school has been arrested and charged with murder.

Colin Gray, 54, is facing four counts of manslaughter, two counts of premeditated murder and eight counts of child abuse.

Officials said Thursday evening that the charges were directly related to his son's actions and “permission to possess a weapon.”

The son, Colt 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 to appear in court on Friday. As an adult, he is charged with four counts of murder.

In the state of Georgia, prosecutors are allowed to charge minors as young as 13 as adults for certain crimes.

This means that if convicted, they may face a harsher sentence.

Authorities are investigating whether Colin Gray purchased the AR weapon in December 2023 as a gift for his son, law enforcement sources told CBS News, the BBC's U.S. partner.

The charge against the father is considered the most serious charge brought against the parents in such cases.

In May 2023, the FBI alerted local police to online threats regarding a school shooting that were linked to an email address associated with the suspect.

A deputy sheriff went to question the boy, who was 13 at the time.

His father told police he had weapons in the house, but his son did not have unsupervised access to them, the FBI said in a statement on Wednesday.

According to officials, the threats were made via Discord, a social media platform popular among video gamers, and included images of weapons.

The account's profile name was in Russian and translated into the last name of the attacker who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

A police report was released on Thursday describing the interrogation of the boy and his father last year.

In the report, an officer described the boy as “reserved” and “quiet” and said he “assured him that he had never threatened to shoot in a school.”

They said he claimed to have deleted his Discord account because it had been repeatedly hacked.

Colin Gray also told police that his son was bullied at school and was struggling with his parents' separation.

Police records show that the boy's mother and father were going through a divorce and he lived with his father during the separation.

The teenager often went hunting with his father. The father told police that he had photographed his son with deer blood on his cheeks.

The boy’s maternal grandfather told the New York Times He partly blames the turbulent living conditions at home following the separation from Mr. Gray and his daughter.

“I understand that my grandson has done something terrible – there is no doubt about that – and he will pay for it,” Charlie Polhamus told the newspaper.

“My grandson did what he did because of the environment he lived in,” he added.