The teenager charged with killing four people at his Georgia high school on Wednesday denied making an online threat, and the authorities could not prove he did. He, and now his father, face murder charges.
JEFFERSON, Ga. — The threat posted online last year to “shoot up a middle school” was the kind that the authorities have become all too familiar with in the United States.
After receiving tips about the threat, the authorities homed in on a 13-year-old boy in Georgia, and an investigator spoke with the teenager and his father.
During the conversation in May 2023, the boy, Colt Gray, assured the investigator, from the sheriff’s office in Jackson County, Ga., that he had not made the threat. He said that he had not used Discord, the social media site where the threat was posted, in months, and that he had deleted his account.
“The only thing I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teenager said, according to a transcript obtained by The New York Times.
The teenager’s father, Colin Gray, confided that his son had been picked on in middle school and said that he had been teaching him about firearms and the outdoors to get him away from video games.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and how to use them and not use them,” the elder Mr. Gray said, adding that his son had recently shot his first deer.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
