A Jackson County, Ga., police report obtained by Yahoo News found that users of the social media platform Discord had reached out to the FBI in May 2023 warning that someone was threatening to shoot an unspecified middle school in the area.
Hours after 14-year-old Colt Gray allegedly killed four people and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday, the FBI Atlanta division shared that it had received those anonymous tips and that Jackson County officials had looked into Gray as the suspect.
“The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father,” the FBI wrote. “The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online.”
Here's a look at what the 2023 investigation found.
What was the May 2023 investigation?
Following the tips from Discord users, authorities went to the Grays’ residence and spoke to both Colt, who was then 13 and a student at Jefferson Middle School in Georgia, and his father, Colin, according to the report. Colin denied knowing what Discord was, and Colt said he had deactivated his Discord account months prior. Discord is a free messaging app, predominantly used in the gaming community.
“Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the report says. “Colt stated he stopped using Discord because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes.”
The tip the FBI received about the Discord account said it had been created in April 2023 — after Colt said he deleted his account. Screenshots of the Discord account showed that the username was in Russian and that the translation of the Russian letters spelled out the name Lanza. Authorities thought this referred to Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who committed the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012.
“Due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI, the allegation that Colt or Colin is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated,” the report concluded. “This case will be exceptionally cleared.”
“The threats were generic and not a specific location or time,” a spokesperson for the FBI Atlanta division told Yahoo News on Thursday. “At this time, we don’t have further information to share other than what was in our statement on our social media channels.”
Can Gray’s parents be charged?
While there is not a lot of precedent in charging the parents of minors involved in shootings, Michael Lawlor, a lawyer and associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven, pointed to the April conviction of Jennifer and James Crumbley, whose son, Ethan, killed four students at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021.
According to Lawlor, there are two key elements to consider when determining whether Gray’s parents can be criminally prosecuted for the Apalachee shooting.
“If it can be proven that the 14-year-old actually did have unfettered access to the AR platform weapon used in the shooting [which would mean they lied to investigators in 2023] and if it could be proven that the parents were aware of his homicidal postings, then a conviction would certainly be possible,” Lawlor told Yahoo News.
The Crumbleys were accused of not properly securing their newly purchased gun at home, which Ethan later brought to school, and for not taking appropriate actions following signs of their son’s mental health decline, even after being shown a violent and disturbing drawing Ethan had done.
The Crumbleys were the first parents to be convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting committed by their child and were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
“There is no reason Georgia prosecutors could not do the same under the state’s ‘involuntary manslaughter’ statute,” Lawlor said. The statute says anyone convicted of involuntary manslaughter can face up to 10 years in prison.
