FBI issued dire warnings about alleged Georgia school shooter – but cops quickly shut probe
The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued dire warnings about Colt Gray’s troubling online activities more than a year before he allegedly shot up his Georgia high school — but cops closed their investigation in just two days without removing any guns from the home.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s office paid a visit to Gray’s home after receiving a tip from the FBI in May 2023 that Colt had threatened to shoot up a middle school on Discord, an online messaging service popular with gamers, according to police report documents viewed by The Post.
Officers spoke to Colin Gray — Colt’s father — as well as Colt himself, then 13 years old.
Colt told police he had deleted his Discord account and “expressed concern” that someone was falsely accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school — insisting he “would never say such a thing, even as a joke.”
Colin admitted there were “hunting rifles” in the house and that Colt had occasional supervised access to them.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Colin Gray said, according to a transcript provided by the sheriff’s office.
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The officers urged him to keep his guns under lock and key and advised them to keep Colt out of school “until this matter could be resolved,” but school was already out for the year.
Police then reviewed the FBI tip two days later and zeroed in on a Discord account created after Colt claimed to have deleted his that used several different IP addresses in different states.
A photo attachment included with the tip showed the profile name was written in Russian and translated as “Lanza,” which investigators note is a reference to Adam Lanza, who shot up Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. in 2012.
Upon bringing this information back to the Grays’ home, Colin told police that Colt did not know or speak Russian and that the boy claimed to have stopped using Discord because “too many people kept hacking his account.”
“I gotta take you at your word, and I hope you’re being honest with me,” Miller told Colt Gray, according to the docs also reported on by ABC.
The dad added that his son “was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” the report states.
Unable to substantiate the threat or definitively link Colt or Colin to the Discord account, the police shelved the matter.
Some 15 months later, Colt would allegedly open fire at Apalachee High School, killing two students and two teachers and putting nine others in the hospital.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum defended her department after she said she reviewed the report from last year and found nothing that could have led to charges.
“We did not drop the ball at all on this,” Mangum told The Associated Press. “We did all we could do with what we had at the time.”
With Post wires
