Police bodycam footage shows 2023 interview with Ga. school shooting suspect Colt Gray and his father
Officers took Colt ‘at his word’ last year that he didn’t threaten to shoot up school.
Body camera footage released Monday showed the interview between Georgia police and suspected school shooter Colt Gray and his father, Colin Gray, as part of a 2023 investigation. Colt, who was then 13, was interviewed after the FBI received anonymous tips that someone was threatening to shoot up a nearby school with an “AR-style rifle and shotgun.”
The footage, which has been shared across news outlets and social media, shows Colt denying to police that he made the threats on Discord, a social media site. During the interview, Colin says he knows nothing about Colt making threats and expresses concern, saying, “I’m going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away and they won’t be accessible to him.” Colin also tells officers that while Colt had access to unloaded hunting rifles in the house, he was “learning” about firearms and safety. The father also acknowledges that “we do a lot of shooting, we do a lot of deer hunting.”
Police, in the bodycam footage, tell Colin they “have no choice” but to take Colt “at his word” that he did not make the threats. Colt and his father have both been arrested and charged in the Sept. 4 shooting that killed four and injured nine at Apalachee High School.
In text messages shared with Yahoo News between officers from the day they visited the Gray residence, there is mention of the specific FBI tip about the AR-style rifle. Police have said an AR-style semiautomatic rifle was used in last week’s shootings.
Later in the text conversation, Capt. Kelly LaCount asked, “Did he have an AR-15?” to which former Capt. Dale Dillow replied, “Only hunting rifles.”
When asked whether the officers physically searched the property, Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum told Yahoo News, “The bodycam shows what was done.”
Questions and concerns remain on whether school officials mishandled warnings of a potential school shooting, especially as Colt’s mother, Marcee Gray, and other family members have spoken out about being in contact with the school as recently as 30 minutes before the shooting happened.
Apalachee High School and the Barrow County Sheriff's office did not immediately respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation directed Yahoo News to the Piedmont Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately respond.
Marcee Gray told family members over the weekend that she had called Apalachee the morning of Sept. 4 to warn a counselor about her son, the Washington Post reported. She allegedly made the 10-minute call to the school around 9:50 a.m. while at her father’s house in Fitzgerald, Ga., CNN reported, which is about a three-and-a-half hour drive away.
Marcee’s father, Charles Polhamus, told CNN that he was next to her when she got a text from Colt that morning saying, “I’m sorry, mom.” It’s not clear whether the message is what made her decide to call the school counselor.
Annie Brown, Marcee's sister, told the Washington Post that the counselor told Marcee during the call that Colt had been talking about a school shooting that morning. The school and family had been in contact about concerns about Colt’s mental health a week before the shooting.
Lyela Sayarath, a student who was in Colt’s class at the time of the shooting, told the Washington Post that a school administrator visited the classroom that morning, but there had been some confusion about Colt and another student who had a similar name. Neither student was in the room at the time the administrator came by, and the administrator had left with a backpack belonging to the wrong student.
“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” Marcee Gray told the Washington Post.
A since-deleted Facebook post that Brown, the aunt, posted on the afternoon of Sept. 4 was discovered by the Daily Beast. In it, Brown said, “Just check yourself before you speak about a child that never asked to deal with the bullshit he saw on a daily basis.”
