By Holly Yan, Dalia Faheid, Isabel Rosales, Mark Morales and Ryan Young, CNN
(CNN) — The father of the mass shooting suspect accused of killing four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, told investigators this week he had purchased the gun used in the killings as a holiday present for his son in December 2023, according to two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student, is accused of killing two students and two teachers with an AR-style rifle in the Wednesday shooting. Nine more people were hospitalized.
One source told CNN the AR-15-style rifle was purchased at a local gun store as a Christmas present.
The timeline the teen’s father, Colin Gray, provided to authorities would put the gun purchase months after authorities first contacted Gray and his family to investigate school shooting threats made online.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia closed that investigation because the tip about the threat could not be substantiated.
CNN has made several attempts to reach Colin Gray by phone and in person at the family home.
Wednesday’s mass shooting, which happened just weeks into the new school year, was the 45th school shooting so far this year and the deadliest US school shooting since the March 2023 massacre at The Covenant School in Nashville that left six people dead.
Live updates: The latest on the Georgia high school shooting
While another community grieves another senseless school shooting, investigators are revealing more details about the case. Here’s what we know:
How ‘everybody’s worst nightmare’ unfolded
The teen suspect left his Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m., his classmate Lyela Sayarath told CNN.
The classroom doors lock automatically, and near the end of class, the suspect knocked on the door to try to come back in, Lyela said.
Another student went to open the door but apparently saw the gun and refused to let him in, Lyela said. That diversion may have saved her life.
“I think he wanted to come to us first,” Lyela said.
Instead, the shooter turned to a nearby classroom and opened fire, “and you hear about 10 to 15 rounds back-to-back,” Lyela said.
The first report of an active shooter came in around 10:20 a.m. Two school resource officers and other law enforcement quickly arrived, Georgia Bureau of Investigations Director Chris Hosey said.
“I heard gunshots outside my classroom and people screaming, people begging not to get shot,” said 14-year-old student Macey Right.
“And then people sitting beside me (were) just shaking and crying.”
One of the school resource officers confronted the shooter, who surrendered and was taken into custody, Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.
The suspect, Colt Gray, is being held Thursday at Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Centers, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice told CNN. He will make his first court appearance Friday, department spokesperson Glenn Allen said.
Gray is continuing to cooperate with investigators, Smith told CNN on Thursday.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called the mass shooting “everybody’s worst nightmare” – but it’s a nightmare shared by many Americans across the country.
So far this year, the United States has suffered at least 385 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.
Beloved teachers and students were killed
Two 14-year-old students, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, went to school and never came home.
The shooter also killed 53-year-old math teacher Christina Irimie and 39-year-old math teacher and assistant football coach Richard Aspinwall.
“We are truly heartbroken,” Christian’s older sister Lisette Angulo posted on a GoFundMe page to support the family. “He was a very good kid and very sweet and so caring. He was so loved by many.”
Another verified GoFundMe page was established to help the family of Aspinwall, a beloved football coach.
“To our beloved defensive coordinator Ricky Aspinwall, we will carry you heavy in our hearts. We love you Coach A!!!” Apalachee Football posted on X Thursday.
Apalachee’s home football game Friday has been canceled, the team’s opponent posted on Facebook.
Irimie, who was active in her local Romanian community and church, is being remembered as “a hero,” said Father Nicolae Clempus, pastor at St. Mary’s Romanian Orthodox Church in Dacula, Georgia.
“We are very sorry that we lost a good soul,” Clempus told CNN.
In addition to the victims killed, nine people were injured and hospitalized, authorities said.
Those patients are expected to recover, and “we don’t expect any more fatalities at this time,” Smith said Wednesday night.
David Phenix, one of the injured teachers who was shot in the foot and hip, was immediately concerned about his students and colleagues when he woke up from surgery, his daughter said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
“After waking up, some of the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Is everyone else okay?’” Katie Phenix wrote.
On Thursday, she shared that her father will remain in the intensive care unit for at least another day. “There’s a pretty long recovery period, but things are lookin’ good,” she said.
It was not immediately clear whether the killer knew or specifically targeted his victims, the sheriff said.
Wednesday was Gray’s second day at the school, Smith told CNN. On Tuesday, Gray had left class early to go to the counselors’ office because he was having anxiety, the sheriff added.
Staff alerted police through their ID cards
The school’s faculty and staff are “heroes in the actions that they took,” Hosey said. “The protocols in this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had.”
One of those protocols included a safety measure adopted just one week ago.
“All of our teachers are armed with a form of an ID called Centegix,” Smith said Wednesday night. Centegix alerts law enforcement “after buttons are pressed on an ID and it alerts us that there is an active situation at the school for whatever reason and that was pressed.”
Centegix’s website says the tool has “dynamic digital mapping, real-time locating capabilities, an easy-to-use wearable panic button for school and district staff, a school visitor management system, and safe reunification capabilities enable educators to plan for and respond faster to emergencies.”
Several states, including Georgia, have introduced legislation for panic alarm systems, CNN has reported.
The teen suspect had an AR-style rifle, authorities say
Gray, the 14-year-old suspect, is in custody and is expected to be tried as an adult, the GBI and Barrow County sheriff said. He faces four counts of felony murder, according to charging documents obtained by CNN.
Gray will remain in the custody of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice until his 17th birthday – even though his case has been moved to the adult system, Allen, the agency spokesperson, told CNN on Thursday.
Under Georgia law, if a juvenile aged 13 to 17 commits a serious crime, they are automatically tried as an adult.
The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-style rifle, Hosey said Wednesday night.
Authorities have not given any information about how the weapon or ammunition were obtained. But investigators have spoken to the suspect and have been in touch with his family, Smith said.
It’s also not clear when and how the suspect brought the rifle to school.
“We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline, from the time that he got here to school (Wednesday) until the incident,” Hosey said.
The suspect was previously questioned over an online threat to ‘shoot up a middle school’
Gray was questioned by law enforcement last year after anonymous tips about “online threats to commit a school shooting” that included photos of guns, according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.
Jackson County borders Barrow County, where Wednesday’s mass shooting took place.
In May 2023, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office received a tip from the FBI about a threat on the chat platform Discord to “shoot up a middle school tomorrow,” according to an investigation report obtained through a public records request
The FBI tip referenced a Discord account created the previous month with an email address that the bureau had associated with Gray. The tip included photo attachments with a profile name in Russian that translated to Adam Lanza – the gunman who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
Investigators wrote that they interviewed Colt and his father, Colin Gray, at their then-home in Jefferson – about 13 miles northeast of Winder, the site of Wednesday’s school shooting.
Colt, who was 13 during the interview, said “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,” Jackson County sheriff’s investigator Daniel Miller Jr. wrote.
Colin Gray told investigators he had hunting rifles in the house and said, “Colt is allowed to use them when supervised but does not have unfettered access to them,” the report said.
“Colt assured me that he never made any threats to shoot up any school,” Miller wrote. “I urged Colin to keep his firearms locked away, and advised him to keep Colt out of school until this matter could be resolved.”
Another investigator wrote that the case would be closed because “the allegation that Colt or Colin is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated.”
At the time, “there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels,” the FBI in Atlanta and the Jackson County sheriff said in their joint statement.
“The 13 year old denied making the threats online,” Sheriff Janis Mangum posted Wednesday on Facebook. “During the course of this investigation, the gaming site threats could not be substantiated. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
Investigators probe threat against 5 schools
Before bullets flew through Apalachee High, the school had received a phone threat earlier that morning, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN.
The phone call warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. But it’s unclear who placed that call.
Investigators have not found any evidence of other schools being targeted but are pursuing “any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident,” Hosey said.
The alleged phone threat about five schools raises questions about whether the caller wanted to divert police to other locations prior to an attack, said John Miller, CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst.
“That threat – as we were told – was that there were going to be shootings at five schools, which would have divided police resources evenly between multiple locations,” Miller said.
‘I really don’t want to go back’
Barrow County schools will be closed the rest of this week as the district’s 15,000 students process the tragedy that unfolded just one month into the school year.
Some Apalachee High students say they worry about going back to class.
“I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and worrying about my career,” Macey said.
“I really don’t want to go back. I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying.”
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