The FBI revealed Wednesday that the suspect in the recent shooting at a high school in Georgia was interviewed last year over previous threats.
“In May 2023, the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time,” the FBI field office in Atlanta said in a post Wednesday on social media platform X. “The online threats contained photographs of guns.”
“Within 24 hours, the FBI determined the online post originated in Georgia and the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office referred the information to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office for action,” the agency added.
The FBI field office noted that “a possible subject, a 13-year-old male” had been found by the local sheriff’s office “and interviewed” by them.
“The Jackson County Sheriffs’ Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father,” the office continued. “The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them. The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
In a follow-up post, the FBI clarified that the teen in custody was the same one related to the shooting at Apalachee High School, which left two students and two teachers dead.
Chris Hosey, the director for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), confirmed the deaths during a press briefing Wednesday, adding that nine others were “taken to local hospitals with various injuries.”
Hosey identified the suspect as Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student at the high school, about an hour outside of Atlanta.
President Biden issued a statement following the news, saying “we cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
“Jill and I are mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence and thinking of all of the survivors whose lives are forever changed. What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” he wrote. “Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
“We are closely coordinating with officials at the federal, state and local level, and are grateful for the first responders who brought the suspect into custody and prevented further loss of life,” Biden added, calling once again on Congress to act on gun reform legislation.
Vice President Harris also took time out of her rally in New Hampshire Wednesday to address the shooting. She called the incident a “senseless tragedy,” adding, “we’ve got to end the epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.”
