Georgia school shooter Colt Gray was bullied by classmates who called him gay, his father said in an interview with investigators last year.
Colin Gray, 54, made the claims while being questioned by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office after the FBI received a tip that his son had threatened a shooting at his high school.
“It was very difficult for him to go to school without being bullied,” Colin Gray told an investigator, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by DailyMail.com.
The father added: ‘It just went from one thing to another… I was trying to get him on the golf team… [they were like] Oh, look, Colt’s gay. He’s dating that guy. He’s been making fun of him day in and day out.’
Gray, 14, is charged as an adult in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Nine people were also wounded in Wednesday’s attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta.
Georgia school shooter Colt Gray was bullied by classmates who called him gay, his father told investigators in an interview last year.
“It was very difficult for him to go to school and not be bullied,” Colin Gray told an investigator, according to a transcript of their conversation obtained by DailyMail.com
He and his father appeared in back-to-back hearings Friday morning with about 50 spectators in the courtroom. The elder Gray also faces charges in connection with the shooting, including counts of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder.
The teenager appeared in person in shackles in court, wearing a green T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He kept his head down, his hair covering his face, and spoke quietly only to Judge Currie Mingledorff, answering “yes sir” when asked to confirm his name.
Meanwhile, his father wept as he appeared in the same courtroom shortly after his son, charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Judge Mingledorff recalled Gray to correct a ruling he made, saying, “I wanted to make it clear to you that the sentence does not include the death penalty. It includes life without the possibility of parole or with the possibility of parole.”
The elder Gray also faces charges in connection with the shooting, including involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. He is scheduled to appear in court Friday
His father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, is accused of buying his 14-year-old son Colt the AR-15-style rifle the boy used. He was arrested Thursday on suspicion of second-degree murder, manslaughter and cruelty to children.
A 2005 Supreme Court ruling prohibits the execution of offenders who were under 18 when their crimes were committed.
According to the sheriff’s report, the teen denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities questioned him last year about a threatening social media post.
Conflicting evidence about the origin of the mail prevented investigators from making an arrest, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would have warranted charges at the time.
The teen was questioned after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, “may have threatened to shoot up a high school tomorrow.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.
The FBI tip pointed to a Discord account linked to an email address associated with Colt Gray, the report said. But the boy “said he would never say something like that, even as a joke,” the investigator’s report said.
The transcript of the interview states that the teenager said, “I promise I will never say anything that…” while the rest of that denial is unintelligible.
The investigator wrote that no arrests were made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account. The account contained profile information in Russian and there was a digital evidence trail showing the account was opened in several cities in Georgia and Buffalo, New York.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would warrant charges at the time.
“We made absolutely no mistake in this,” Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. “We did everything we could do with what we had at the time.”
According to agents, the Discord account had a username in Russian and the letters translated to the name Lanza, a reference to Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.
Gray denied being the author of the threats and told police he had shut down his Discord after being hacked repeatedly. He expressed concern that someone would make such accusations about him.
“He knows how dangerous guns are, what they can do and what not to use them,” the father, Colin Gray, said, according to a transcript obtained by the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff’s investigators closed the case because they could not prove Gray had any connection to the Discord account and found no grounds to seek a court order to seize the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office on Thursday.
The boy is said to be obsessed with other notorious school shooters, such as Nikolas Cruz, the killer from Parkland, Florida.
