14‑year-old shooter kills 4 at Georgia high school with rifle he had gotten as Christmas gift
Colt Gray on Wednesday entered his high school, Apalachee, in Winder, Georgia, and opened fire on students and teachers present there. Investigators determined that the AR-15 rifle he used was a Christmas gift from his father.
14-year-old entered the school; four people are dead
Colt Gray enrolled at Apalachee High School in Winder just two weeks ago. Wednesday was supposed to be his second day of school. Instead, it was a day of a bloody massacre.
It was 9:45 AM. His classmate, Leyla Sayerath, recounted that she was sitting next to Colt in algebra class a few minutes before the shooting began. Colt left the classroom, but not to go to the bathroom. When he returned, one of the students stood up to open the door for him but froze when he saw the gun in Colt's hands.
Unfortunately, the neighboring classroom was open. In total, Colt injured 13 people throughout the school, four of them fatally. The victims of the shooting were 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers 39-year-old Richard Aspenwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie.
It was the deadliest school shooting in Georgia history.
After the shooting, police searched the teenager's home, finding evidence that Colt Gray was obsessed with mass shootings, particularly the Parkland High School massacre, during which 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people.
14-year-old killed peers and teachers; he was already questioned by the FBI
Colt and his father had been questioned by the FBI a few months ago concerning alleged threats. It is now known that the teenager received the rifle from his father as a Christmas present.
A few months ago, Colt and Colin Gray were questioned because the teenager posted threats about a school shooting on the social media platform Discord. However, in an interview with the FBI, Colt swore that "he would never say such a thing, even as a joke."
An investigator wrote in a report that no arrests were made due to "inconsistent information" on the Discord account, which contained profile information in Russian and a digital evidence trail indicating access from various cities in Georgia and Buffalo, New York.
Investigators claim they did everything they could at the time and that there was nothing indicating that a school shooting would occur on September 4th this year.
We did not drop the ball at all on this. We did all we could do with what we had at the time—said Janis Magnum, Jackson County Sheriff, to the Associated Press.
Colt Gray claimed that he closed his Discord account after it was repeatedly hacked. The account name was in Russian. Translation revealed that it included the name Lanza. Adam Lanza was the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012, during which he killed 26 people, including 20 children aged 6 and 7.
Investigators closed the case then as they could not prove that Colt was in any way connected to the Discord account on which the threats were posted.
Colt remains in juvenile detention in Georgia, and his first trial will begin on September 6th. It is known that he will be tried as an adult.
