US School Shooting Suspect, 14, Questioned About Threats Last Year

A boy accused of killing four people at his high school in Georgia was interviewed last year by police about anonymous online threats, the FBI has said.

Colt Gray, 14, denied to police in May 2023 he was behind internet posts that contained images of guns, warning of a school shooting. The suspect opened fire on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in the city of Winder, killing two teachers and two pupils, investigators say. Eight students and one teacher were injured.

He was arrested on campus. Gray was charged with four counts of murder on Thursday and will face court on Friday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.

Police have identified the victims as teachers Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall and 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo. The agency said that within 24 hours investigators had determined that the threats originated in Georgia.

Sheriff’s deputies interviewed the boy and his father, who “stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them”, the FBI said. Sheriff Jud Smith described the attack as “pure evil” and said officers were on scene within minutes of receiving emergency calls at 10:20 local time (14:20 GMT).

Two officers assigned to the school “immediately encountered the subject” and the boy “immediately surrendered”, the sheriff said. He added that no motive had been identified and that law enforcement did not know of “any targets at this point”.

Students described chaotic scenes as alerts went out that an attacker was on campus.

Lyela Sayarath, who was in the alleged attacker’s class, told CNN that the suspect left the room at the beginning of an algebra lesson. She said he came back and knocked on the door, which had locked automatically, but another student refused to let him in after noticing he had a gun. Lyela told CNN the attacker then went to the classroom next door, where he began shooting. Marques Coleman, 14, said he saw the attacker holding a “big gun” just before the shooting began. “I got up, I started running, he started shooting like, like 10 times. He shot at least 10 times,” he told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. “My teacher started barricading the door with desks,” he said. After standing up, the pupil said he saw “one of my classmates on the ground bleeding so bad”, another girl shot in the leg and a friend shot in the stomach.

Source: Bbc.com