Footage has emerged of the 14-year-old suspect in a Georgia school shooting being interviewed by police over online threats of a similar attack more than a year ago.
Deputies with Jackson County’s Sheriff’s Office in Winder, Georgia, visited the home of Colt Gray, then 13, in May 2023 following a tip-off from the FBI that somebody had posted on Discord about planning to “shoot up a middle school tomorrow.”
Gray has now been charged with the murder of four people—two students, and two teachers—in a shooting spree that also saw nine others wounded at the town’s Apalachee High School. Local police say Gray has admitted “I did it” while being interrogated after his arrest on September 4, while his mother has claimed to have warned the school around half an hour before the attack took place.
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In the bodycam footage of the 2023 visit—released by the sheriff’s office on Monday, and shared online by NBC and other outlets—Gray denied posting the comments on Discord, assuring them: “I would never say something like that,” and insisting that he had deleted his account on the chat platform several months earlier.
One of the deputies responded by telling the teenager: “I got no choice but to take you at your word right now, but like I was telling your dad if we found out otherwise, then it’s a different story.”
Colt’s father, Colin Gray also appears in the footage, telling officers that despite being bullied his son was “doing really good” at school. Colin Gray has since been arrested on four counts of manslaughter, two of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children in the wake of the killings earlier this month.
The father told officers during the visit last year that his son had been struggling with family-related stress at the time, following his parents’ separation and subsequent eviction from their home.
He added that he’d been training his son in the “responsible” use of firearms, taking him on hunting trips in an effort to get him out of the house and to stop playing video games.
“We do a lot of shooting, we do a lot of deer hunting. He shot his first deer this year,” Gray is heard to say in a longer clip of the interview, shared by CNN. “I don’t know anything about him saying sh-t like that [but] I’m gonna be mad as hell if he did,” he added.
Colt’s grandfather, Charles Polhamus, has since described Colin as “evil,” alleging he drove the 14-year-old “to do what he did” last week through a relentless campaign of psychological and physical abuse. His aunt, Annie Polhaumus Brown, has also spoken about her nephew’s troubled childhood, and vowed to stand by him at trial.
If convicted, Colt faces up to life in prison, with his father facing a maximum total of 180 years behind bars.
