Father Arrested After 14-Year-Old Charged With Killing 4 In US School Shooting, Biden Reacts

The father of the 14-year-old suspected school shooter Colt Gray was arrested on Thursday in connection with the 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.

‘Begging for help’

Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder and would be tried as an adult, officials said. His aunt, Annie Brown, told the Washington Post on Thursday that the boy had been “begging for help from everybody around him.” She said he had been struggling with his mental health prior to the shooting. “The adults around him failed him,” she lamented.

‘Cannot accept this as normal’

Issuing a strong statement, US President Joe Biden mourned the loss of innocent lives, saying 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,” he said in a statement released by the White House.

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. Investigators have yet to comment on what may have motivated the first U.S. campus mass shooting since the start of the school year.

Threat to commit school shooting

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.

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. “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.

(With agency inputs)