The 14-year-old arrested after a mass killing at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had been “begging for months” for mental health help before he allegedly carried out a deadly attack Wednesday, according to an aunt of the shooting suspect.
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Brown, who lives in Central Florida, declined to elaborate on the teen’s mental health challenges but said she tried from afar to get him help. In text messages to a relative, she voiced concern last month that her nephew had access to a gun, according to screenshots she provided to The Post; last week, she wrote that her mother — the suspect’s grandmother — had gone to see a counselor at his school to request help, the screenshots show.
He “starts with the therapist tomorrow,” his grandmother wrote in a text message one week before he opened fire on fellow students.
Brown said her nephew’s struggles were exacerbated by a difficult home life. The teen’s mother pleaded guilty to a charge of family violence last December and was ordered to have no contact with Colin Gray, her husband and the suspected shooter’s father, according to Barrow County Superior Court records. Colin Gray was charged Thursday with multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and cruelty to children, according to Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Hosey said at a news conference late Thursday that Gray had knowingly allowed his son to have a weapon.
The family had “previous contacts” with the local child services department, Hosey has previously said.
As investigators continued Thursday looking for a motive for the shooting, the father’s arrest, aunt’s account and other new details contributed to an emerging picture of the suspect and underlined questions about whether key authority figures — including in his family and in law enforcement — may have missed warning signs and chances to prevent the tragedy at Apalachee.
The teen had also come to the attention of law enforcement officers in Georgia who were pursuing an FBI tip about online threats to open fire at a school more than a year before the shooting at Apalachee. At the time, in May 2023, the teen’s father told the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office that his son was not allowed to use guns without supervision, according to records of the office’s investigation obtained by The Post. The teen told officers that he was concerned that anyone would suggest he would threaten to “shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” the records show.
In a search of the suspect’s home after the shooting at Apalachee High, authorities found writing referencing past school shootings, including the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The Appalachee shooting left four people dead and nine others injured, Barrow County officials have said. The suspect, identified by authorities as Colt Gray, has been charged with four felony counts of murder and is expected to make his first court appearance on Friday morning, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Neither Gray’s parents nor his grandmother have commented publicly. The Post’s efforts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for Barrow County school district did not respond to requests for comment.
The 2023 investigation that brought investigators from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office into contact with Colt Gray was spurred by threatening comments made on the social media platform Discord, the records obtained by The Post show. The comments came from an account associated with an email address that the FBI believed was owned by Gray, the records say.
The teen told officers he had previously used Discord but got rid of his account months earlier “because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” the records show.
