Father of teen suspect charged with murder in Georgia school shooting
Father of 14-year-old suspect in Georgia school shooting charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children
The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was arrested and charged on Thursday with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the attack.
The father, Colin Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.
The charges against Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, the FBI director for the state, said at a news conference.
Earlier on Thursday, Charlie Polhamus, the teenager’s maternal grandfather, said he believed his grandson was responsible for what happened, but he also cast some of the blame on the tumult in the teenager’s home life with his father, who had split from Polhamus’s daughter. “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” Polhamus said.
When investigators looking into an online threat spoke to Gray last year, he said he had been teaching his son, then 13, about hunting and guns to divert his attention from video games. The teenager denied making the threat to “shoot up a middle school” and claimed his account on the social media platform Discord had been hacked, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview.
Gray told the investigator that he had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He also suggested that he had emphasised the dangers of using a firearm.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Gray told the investigator at the time.
Records from an eviction two years ago show that Gray owned an array of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle. Officials said that type of firearm was used in the shooting on Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder.
Georgia lawmakers in 2022 loosened gun laws to allow most residents to carry a firearm without a permit. The state is not among those, for example, that penalises failing to safely store a firearm.
Though four people, two teachers and two children, were killed in the attack, Gray has been charged with only two counts of second-degree murder. In Georgia, that charge applies when a person is accused of causing a death while committing cruelty to children in the second degree, which involves criminal negligence.
Related
Share this page
Guest Posts by Easy Branches
