Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School, has been identified as the suspect who is suspected of opening fire on September 4.
Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at the school, has been named as the suspect who is suspected of opening fire on a Georgia school on Wednesday morning, September 4. A law enforcement official told CNN that Gray, who is being held, used an AR-15-style rifle to carry out the shooting. Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, announced that he will face adult murder charges.
Gray opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, which is about an hour outside of Atlanta, killing two teachers and two students. Nine additional people were admitted to the hospital.
Who is Colt Gray?
According to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Gray was questioned by law enforcement last year about “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time.” There were pictures of guns in the threats.
The county sheriff’s office had interviewed the suspect at the time, as well as his father. The statement said, “The subject did not have unsupervised access to the hunting guns, despite the father’s claim that they were in the house.” “The person denied posing the threats on the internet. Jackson County notified nearby schools so that the topic would be monitored going forward.
The statement also stated that there was no probable reason to make an arrest at that time or to take any other local, state, or federal law enforcement action.
What motivated Gray to carry out the attack is unknown. It appeared that he was unrelated to the victims before.
The school’s junior Lyela Sayarath called Gray “pretty quiet.” “He was never one to talk much. Most of the time, he was absent. The 16-year-old student told CNN, “Either he didn’t just come to school or he would just skip class.”
Sayarath continued, “Even when he would have spoken, it was only brief statements or one-word answers.”
Just before the shooting, Sayarath and Gray were seated next to each other in math class. The fact that Gray was the shooter did not surprise her, she said. “Just because of when you think of shooters and how they act or things that they do, it’s normally the quiet kid,” Sayarath said.
Gray had left the math class at the beginning of the period and returned toward the end, Sayarath recalled. When the doors were closed, they automatically locked, and Gray was not permitted to reenter. Sayarath claimed that her teacher was instructed to check her email over the loudspeaker, and that shortly after, Gray was pleading to be allowed inside.
Sayarath remarked, “I’m pretty sure she saw that he had a gun and so she backed away. They almost let him in.” “Then he turned away, and that’s when you hear what sounds like the first explosion.”
Gray had gone into a different classroom and started shooting. Only a few minutes after the gunfire started, he was placed under arrest.
