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Authorities released body camera footage of an interview with the suspected Apalachee High School shooter and his father last May.
One year before Colt Gray, 14, was charged with four counts of murder after opening fire in the hallways of his high school on Wednesday, September 5, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office deputies interviewed him and his father after receiving an FBI tip that the teen was threatening to shoot up a middle school on the social media platform Discord.
The interviews, conducted by two sheriff’s deputies on May 21, 2023, took place outside the home where the father and son lived, where a large blue “G” hangs on the Grays’ door.
The footage begins with two deputies approaching the Georgia home. Colin Gray, the father of the now-suspected shooter, answered the door in a t-shirt, shorts and a silver cross necklace dangling from his neck.
When the deputy asks whether then-13-year-old Colt Gray plays video games, the father replied: “Yeah he does. Plays ‘em all the time.”
The father then admitted that he had weapons in his house. When a deputy asked whether they were accessible to the teen, Colin Gray said: “They are. I mean, there’s nothing loaded but they are down.”
The father then started rattling off his son’s shooting experience: “We do a lot of shooting. We do a lot of deer hunting. He shot his first deer this year.”
“The picture on my phone is him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer. It’s just the greatest day ever. He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and not use them,” the father continued.
Colin Gray denied knowing anything about his son threatening to shoot up a school. ”I don’t know anything about him saying s***like that. And I’m going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away and they won’t be accessible,” he told officers. “I’m trying to teach him about firearms and safety and how to do it all and get him interested in the outdoors.”
“Get him away from those video games,” one officer retorted.
The father kept repeating that he was in “shock” by the allegation: “I’m pretty much in shock, to be honest with you. I’m a little p****ed off, to be even really honest with you.”
The footage then captured Colt Gray coming outside to join his father, where he denied knowing about the school shooting threat. “Maybe they misheard somebody else,” the teen tells the deputies. The teen, wearing a blue hat, blue shirt and sweatpants, swayed back and forth as he insisted that he didn’t know anything about the allegation.
When asked about using Discord, Colt Gray said the last time he used it was a “few months ago” but that he doesn’t “have it anymore.” The account in question made mentions to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook school shooter, according to a report obtained by The Independent.
Despite what the teen told deputies, an investigation into the Discord account indicates that the account was made after the teen said he’d deleted it, according to the report. The probe also revealed that the IP addresses associated with the Discord account appeared to come from different parts of Georgia, as well as New York and Virginia.
Authorities ended up closing the investigation after finding “the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated.” A Discord spokesperson also told CNN that the platform removed an account “believed to be associated with” Gray in May 2023 for violating the platform’s policy against extremism.
During his interview, the father offered some insight into what was happening behind closed doors. He told officers that he often visited the school and is on a “first name basis” with school officials.
“We’re up there all the time talking to the school,” he added, later explaining that his son gets “picked on.” He also explained that after he and his wife “split,” his wife took the younger two kids while Colin and Colt lived separately. He admitted that his son was “struggling with the separation” of his parents and can sometimes “get flustered.”
Before the officers approached his son, Colin Gray pleaded: “Please instill in him that if this is whatever or wherever this is coming from, this is no joke. Like, it’s no joke.”
“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t,” an officer replied.
“No, I know. I’m telling you right now, we talk about this quite a bit, all the school shootings, things that happened,” the father said.
One year later, Colt Gray is accused of carrying an AR-15-style weapon last into his high school, opening fire, and charged with killing two students — Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14 — and two teachers — Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
His father was taken into custody the next day, charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children. Months after the sheriff’s deputies investigated the father and son, Colin Gray reportedly purchased an AR-15-style rifle as a holiday gift in December 2023 for his son.
