New York:

The mother of the teenager charged with fatally shooting two students and two teachers at a Georgia high school on Wednesday called the school that morning and warned a counselor about an “extreme emergency,” the Washington Post reported.

Marcee Gray, the mother of the suspected shooter, 14-year-old Colt Gray, said she told the counselor to find her son immediately, the newspaper reported. Phone records provided by a relative to the Post show a 10-minute call to Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, at 9:50 a.m., about 30 minutes before the attack began.

Gray declined to detail what prompted her call but told the Post on Saturday she had shared that with law enforcement. She expressed remorse for the “pain and suffering” that the victims and their families are going through.

A school administrator went to her son’s math class that morning, according to another student, the Post reported, but he was not in the room.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the lead investigative agency, referred questions to the Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Colt Gray has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder. His father, Colin Gray, is also charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children, in an emerging legal strategy to hold parents responsible for allowing access to firearms to minors who carry out attacks.

Prosecutors say Colin Gray provided the weapon used in the shooting.

In May 2023, investigators from a neighboring county interviewed both Colin and Colt Gray about online threats to carry out a school shooting. Colt Gray said he had not made the threats, and his father said his son did not have free access to his hunting rifles.

The case was closed after investigators could not substantiate that either Gray was connected to the threats.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The 14-year-old student who killed four of his schoolmates in US’s Georgia was questioned last year by police about online threats, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said.

In May 2023, Colt Gray was questioned by police who believed he was behind internet posts that contained images of guns, warning of a school shooting.

The FBI said its National Threat Operations Center had alerted local law enforcement after receiving tips about “online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time”.

After the location of the threats were determined, the police interviewed the teen and his father.

While the teen denied sending the threats, his father told police that he had hunting guns in the house but the then 13-year-old “did not have unsupervised access to them”.

“At the time, there was no probable cause for an arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state or federal levels,” the FBI said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the boy used an assault rifle to open fire in Apalachee High School, killing two teachers and two student, investigators say. 

Eight other students and one teacher were injured in the attack. Gray was arrested from the school premises and will be tried as an adult.

The school sent out a message to parents saying it was “currently in a hard lockdown after reports of gunfire.”

Survivors recounted the moment when Gray began attacking the students. One student told BBC that she saw him leave a class after a maths lesson and when he returned he had a gun in his hand. One of her classmates saw the gun and refused to open the door for Gray even as he continued to pound on it.

Gray then moved to the next classroom and opened fire.

According to the BBC, this was the 23rd US school shooting of 2024. So far 11 people have died and 38 have been injured in such attacks this year.

Washington:

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday the perpetrator of a high school shooting in Georgia that killed at least four people was a “sick and deranged monster.”

“Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA,” the former president posted on his Truth Social platform. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)