Colt Gray obtained AR-15 as Christmas current from dad

Colt Gray was given the gun he used to shoot dead four people at his Georgia high school as a Christmas present from his father months after they were questioned by the FBI over alleged threats.

The 14-year-old was arrested on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, minutes after authorities say he opened fire on students and teachers.

Law enforcement sources told CNN Thursday that the teenage shooter received the gun for the holidays this past December.

His father Colin Gray has told authorities that he bought the gun for the boy himself as a Christmas gift. Colin Gray has yet to make any public comment on the shooting. 

This was just months after the teenager and his father were interviewed by local law enforcement in connection with online threats about carrying out a school shooting made on the gaming social-media platform Discord, according to investigators. 

The teen was interviewed after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, ‘had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school tomorrow.’ The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video gamers, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.

The FBI’s tip pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address linked to Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy said ‘he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,’ according to the investigator’s report.

The interview transcript quotes the teen as saying: ‘I promise I would never say something where …’ with the rest of that denial listed as inaudible.

The investigator wrote that no arrests were made because of ‘inconsistent information’ on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a digital evidence trail indicating it had been accessed in different Georgia cities as well as Buffalo, New York.

Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.

‘We did not drop the ball at all on this,’ Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. ‘We did all we could do with what we had at the time.’

The Discord account had a user name written in Russian, and the translation of the letters spelled out the name Lanza, referencing Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school tragedy, officers said.

Gray denied he was the author of the threats, telling police he’d shut down his Discord after being repeatedly hacked. He expressed concerns that someone would make those accusations about him. 

‘He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,’ the father, Colin Gray, said according to a transcript obtained from the sheriff’s office. 

Colin reportedly assured officers that he would be ‘mad as hell’ if he learned the allegations about his son making threats were true, and that ‘all the guns [would] go away.’

Online, his aunt vowed ‘full throttle blood’ as she claimed he’d been subjected to ‘abuse’ his entire life. Those comments were deleted last night after a barrage of backlash. 

The sheriff’s investigators closed the case after being unable to substantiate that either Gray was connected to the Discord account, 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.

Gray appears in the booking photo with long hair that has been dyed blond – a far cry from the smiling, baby-faced boy pictured in his middle school yearbook just two years earlier.  

The boy reportedly had an obsession with other infamous school shooters such as Parkland, Florida killer Nikolas Cruz.

Two students and two teachers were dead inside the school building by the time he laid down his AR-style weapon.

Students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, and teachers Richard Aspenwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, were named as the deceased. 

When police searched the teen’s Georgia home following the bloodbath, they reportedly found clues the teenager was ‘obsessed’ with mass shootings – specifically the Parkland massacre in 2018, which left 17 people dead. 

Gray was known to the FBI after several tips came in about him last year.  

The boy remains in juvenile custody in Georgia, awaiting his first court appearance, which is scheduled for Friday morning. He will be charged as an adult, sheriffs said. 

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said Gray immediately surrendered when confronted by school resource officers at the scene.

Sheriff Smith revealed that Wednesday was Gray’s first ‘real day’ at Apalachee High.

He said: ‘He was a brand new student to Barrow County Schools, he had enrolled about two weeks prior. This was his second day at school. He had been before, he left early, on that day and this was his first real full day.’ 

According to law enforcement, Gray opened fire at approximately 10:23am, hitting at least 13 people as frantic scenes took over the school. 

Images showed students streaming out onto the campus as terrified parents raced to find their children, with one mother describing the scene outside the school as pure ‘chaos.’ 

A junior at the school, Lyela Sayerath, said she was sat next to Colt Gray in algebra class minutes before he began the shooting spree. 

She told CNN that Colt left the classroom at the beginning of their class at 9:45am, around 30 minutes before active shooter alerts sounded. 

Gray didn’t take a bathroom pass, she said, leading her to initially think he was merely skipping class – before a loudspeaker announcement told teachers to check their emails. 

Shortly after, Sayerath said Gray returned outside their classroom, and a student got up to open the door for him before jumping back at the sight of his gun. 

‘I guess he saw we weren’t going to let him in. And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open, so I think he just started shooting in the classroom,’ she said. 

Sayerath said Gray proceeded to fire off a number of bullets ‘one after another’, adding: ‘When we heard it, most people just dropped to the floor and like kind of crawled in an area like piled on top of each other.’ 

Sayerath said her friend was in the next classroom and witnessed someone being shot, which left him ‘shaken up’. ‘He saw somebody get shot. He had blood on him. He was kinda limping. He looked horrified,’ she added. 

As information floods in on the school shooting – officially the deadliest in Georgia’s history – students and parents shared their shock at the horror that unfolded. 

One mother, Erin Clark, shared the text exchange she had with her son Ethan from the moment he learned there was an active shooter at his school. 

He wrote: ‘school shooting rn (right now). I’m scared. I’m not joking.’

His mom responded instantly, assuring him that she was leaving work. In a heartbreaking response, Ethan wrote: ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too baby. Where are you?’ Clark said. Ethan told her that he was in class, adding ‘someone’s dead.’

Heartbroken students have been arriving outside school grounds in a steady stream on Thursday to mourn the tragedy.

A makeshift memorial has been created using a wreath and flowers. On Thursday, families and students stopped by the somber scene to pay their respects to the lives lost in the tragedy.

President Joe Biden issued a statement condemning gun violence after the tragedy. 

He said: ‘What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart. 

‘Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. 

‘We cannot continue to accept this as normal.’

Biden called on Congress to say ‘enough is enough’ and pass new gun safety legislation, describing gun violence as an ‘epidemic.’