By Rich McKay, Reuters
Cars line the road as parents arrive to meet students after a shooting at Apalachee High School on 4 September, 2024 in Winder, Georgia. Photo: AFP / Getty Images North America
Georgia state officials arrested the father of the 14-year-old suspected school shooter Colt Gray in connection with a shooting that killed four people and wounded nine at Apalachee High School.
Colin Gray, 54, was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
"These charges stem from Mr Gray knowingly allowing his son Colt to possess a weapon," Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told a media conference.
Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder and would be tried as an adult, officials said.
Both Grays had been questioned by local officials in neighboring Jackson County last year in connection with an online threat to commit a school shooting, but there was no probable cause for their arrest, the FBI said on Wednesday.
In that 2023 probe, the father said he had hunting guns in the house but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them, and the son denied making the threats online, the FBI said.
Georgia state and Barrow County investigators say the younger Gray used an "AR platform style weapon", or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the attack in which two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed.
It remained unclear how the shooter obtained the weapon.
Investigators have yet to comment on what may have motivated the first US campus mass shooting since the start of the school year.
Jackson County sheriff's investigators closed the case after being unable to substantiate that either Gray was connected to the Discord account where the threats were made, and did not find grounds to seek the needed court order to confiscate the family's guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff's office on Thursday.
"This case was worked, and at the time the boy was 13, and it wasn't enough to substantiate," Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said in an interview. "If we get a judge's order or we charge somebody, we take firearms for safekeeping."
The younger Gray was taken into custody shortly after the shooting and was being held without bond at Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice communications director Glenn Allen said on Thursday.
His arraignment is set for Friday morning before a Georgia Superior Court judge in Barrow County by video camera.
The charges against Colin Gray come after the April sentencing of the mother and father of a high school shooter in Michigan, believed to be the first time parents were held legally responsible for their children's action in a school shooting.
In that case, Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, who in 2021 shot and killed four classmates at Oxford High School, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after being convicted for manslaughter. The jury found them guilty of not securing guns in their home and of ignoring warning signs that their son was mentally disturbed.
Experts and gun safety advocates have said their trials were an important step in holding gun-owning parents more accountable for school violence carried out by their children. Studies by the US Department of Homeland Security have shown that around 75 percent of all school shooters obtained their weapons at home.
- Reuters
