What we've learned about the 2023 Jackson County online threats investigation and the Apalachee High School shooting suspect
Jackson County deputies interviewed Colt Gray over a year ago while looking into school threats made online, but didn't have enough evidence for an arrest.
Hours after the Apalachee High School shooting in Barrow County, Jackson County Sheriff Janis Magnum said the FBI Atlanta field office contacted her regarding the suspect, 14-year-old Colt Gray.
She said the agency mentioned an investigation her office conducted in May 2023, which was tied to the suspect, who was 13 at the time.
Sheriff Magnus said at first that the name "Colt Gray" didn’t ring a bell, and she couldn’t recall the specifics of the investigation because, again, it was over a year old.
Sheriff Magnum who had been at the Apalachee High School campus on Wednesday, assisting Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said she returned to her office in Jefferson to start hunting down the case file to get a better understanding of the investigation.
The FBI was going to release a statement, and she wanted to make sure she was aware of the facts of the case, now knowing it was tied to allegations that Gray threatened to carry out a shooting at an undisclosed middle school in 2023.
Sheriff Magnum said she supported the FBI in releasing the initial release as she wanted to be as transparent as possible in case their investigation from 2023 would play any role in the investigation into what unfolded inside Apalachee High School in Barrow County this week.
On Thursday, the day after the shooting, Sheriff Magnum released the entire investigation fact sheet that was completed on May 21, 2023.
The investigation fact sheet
It states on that Sunday in 2023, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office received a tip from the FBI about someone who had possibly threatened to shoot up a middle school the next day. The information was received by the FBI from users on a Discord chat group.
Discord has more than 500 million registered users and is one of the most popular ways for gamers to communicate online. It allows friends to chat via voice, video, or text, and join servers where large communities gather. Gaming is Discord's focus.
The report states, an investigator along with a Jackson County deputy looked into the claims and it eventually led them to talk with Colin Gray at a home in Jefferson. The investigator confirmed Colin had a son, Colt Gray, who was 13 at the time.
During the conversation, the investigator wrote Colin stated he didn’t know what Discord was. The investigator then asked Colin if he could speak to his son, which he allowed. The investigator wrote, “Colt stated he used to have a Discord account but deleted it prior to moving from their previous address.”
The investigator added in his report, “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.”
As the conversation continued, Colin informed the investigator that he did have firearms in the house, but they were hunting rifles. The investigator wrote that Colin stated, “Colt is allowed to use them when supervised but does not have unfettered access to them.”
Interview transcripts show the dad told investigations the guns were accessible to Colt, but "there's nothing loaded."
The investigator wrote, “Colt assured me that he never made any threats to shoot up any school."
The investigator stated he “urged Colin to keep his firearms locked away and advised him to keep Colt out of school until this matter could be resolved.” At that time, Colin stated, “Colt's last day of school was the previous Friday at Jefferson Middle School.”
The incident report shows that more FBI tips were examined two days later, on May 23 of that year. Tips came from people in Australia and California who were concerned about comments made by a Discord user.
The tips included information associated with the user's account, including the account's email address. Investigators determined that the email associated with the account was owned by Colt Gray, according to the FBI's "open-source query." However, the investigator stated the platform used for the query was not listed in the FBI tip, therefore, this information is unreliable.
The account had been created on April 2, 2023 -- after Gray had claimed to have deleted it.
Attached to the FBI tip the investigator said he located a list of IP addresses used for the Discord Account.
Included with the tip were also several photo attachments.
RELATED: Father of 14-year-old accused gunman arrested in connection to Apalachee High School shooting: GBI
Upon opening the attachments, the investigator said he observed that the user profile name was written in Russian. Translation of the Russian letters spell out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza, who is the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter in Newtown, Connecticut.
The investigator continued the investigation following up on the tip. The investigator spoke with Colin and informed him of the inconsistent information found on the FBI tip.
Gray and his father told deputies that they did not recognize the email associated with the account and that neither of them spoke Russian.
In a follow-up interview, the teen reiterated to authorities that he had stopped using Discord because “too many people kept hacking his account,” and he feared someone might use his information for “nefarious purposes.”
The report ended by stating, “At this time, 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. This case will be exceptionally cleared.”
Hear the audio
11Alive also obtained the audio files from the 2023 interviews from the Jackson County Sheriff's Office. Here's a look into some of the conversation.
Investigator: Do you have weapons in the house?
Colin Gray: We do.
Investigator: Are they accessible to him?
Colin: They are. I mean, there's nothing loaded, but they are down.
The report indicates that Colt Gray comes from a hunting family. He learned with a bow, then a pellet gun, and eventually rifles -- like the one used in the school shooting.
The interviews also give a glimpse at the struggles the teen allegedly had at school.
Colin Gray: "He's getting picked on at school... That's why I keep going up there."
Investigator: Yeah.
Colin Gray: "You know cause you just never, you never really know and I don't want anything to happen to him."
Hear more of the interviews below.
The sheriff's remarks
Sheriff Magnum said after reading the case file that she believes her detective did all he could with the information he had at the time. She said the threat allegation had to be substantiated to be able to file a charge and due to the lack of solid evidence based on the tip, the evidence just wasn’t there.
“When you have a gaming app, it makes it more difficult to pinpoint that he definitely did it because there were other IP addresses on that account,” Sheriff Magnus explained.
Sheriff Magnum said his father should have had his guns locked up after being alerted to a possible threat allegation leveraged against his son, regardless of whether it was substantiated or not.
On Thursday night, just hours after 11Alive interviewed Sheriff Magnus, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced they had arrested Colin Gray and charged him in connection to the shooting at Apalachee High. The GBI said Colin knowingly allowed his 14-year-old son to possess a gun. Hours after the shooting, the GBI confirmed the gun used in the shooting at the high school was an AR-style weapon.
“This is an assault rifle, and he knew the allegations had been made a year ago; there’s no way that kid should’ve had a gun,” Sheriff Magnum explained.
Sheriff Magnum said while her office has been criticized, she doesn’t believe a charge in May of 2023 would have stopped the shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday. She pointed out parents must be more involved and take more responsibility in their children’s lives.
“It’s terrible we have such evil in our society,” she said.
In a separate news release, Mangum said she spoke with Jefferson City Schools Superintendent Donna McMullan and learned that the school district said it had no record of being notified of the alleged threat made by Colt Gray who had been enrolled there.
Mangum's news release states that in a May 21, 2023 email sent to the FBI by one of the investigators in the sheriff's office, it's noted by one of the investigators that “we have made area schools aware and will monitor this subject."
"Jefferson City Schools was not in session at the time the threat was relayed to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. The email is the only documentation that we have that the schools were notified," Mangum's news release states.
A statement from Discord
Discord also released statement about the 2023 online threat. It said, "an account believed to be associated with the suspect was created on April 2, 2023, and removed by Discord on May 21, 2023, for violating our policy against extremism."
Read Discord's Full statement below:
“Discord strongly condemns violence, and our deepest condolences are with the victims and their families in Winder, Georgia. An account believed to be associated with the suspect was created on April 2, 2023, and removed by Discord on May 21, 2023, for violating our policy against extremism. At that time, Discord’s Safety team immediately responded to law enforcement, provided all requested information to aid in their investigation, and acted swiftly to remove the user from the platform. Based on our ongoing investigation since then, we have no indication that the suspect used Discord to discuss or plan this horrific attack.
Our Community Guidelines make it clear that Discord has a zero-tolerance policy against hate and extremism. Our Safety team proactively identifies harmful content and reviews reports by users, moderators, trusted third-party partners, or where required by law. We take immediate action when we detect violations of our policies, which can include removing content, banning users, shutting down servers, and engaging with law enforcement.”