Father of teenager arrested on suspicion of shooting at Georgia school

Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old Apalachee High School shooter who killed four people in a shooting spree at the high school in the US state of Georgia, has been arrested.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the 54-year-old was charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of premeditated murder and eight counts of child abuse, CNN reported.

GBI Director Chris Hosey said at a press conference Thursday evening that the charges were directly related to his son's actions and “permission to possess a weapon.”

The son, Colt Gray, is charged with four counts of murder, according to charging documents obtained by CNN. He will be tried as an adult, the GBI and the Barrow County Sheriff said.

According to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, Colin Gray told investigators this week that he purchased the gun used in the murders as a Christmas present for his son in December 2023.

A source told CNN the AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas gift. The time frame the teen's father gave authorities would put the gun purchase months after authorities first contacted Gray and his family to investigate online threats about school shootings.

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

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.

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.