Find my son 'immediately': Mother of Georgia shooting suspect called school before attack

The mother of a 14-year-old who has been charged with murder over the fatal shooting of four people at his high school in the US state of Georgia warned staff at the school before the killings.

Fourteen-year-old Apalachee High School students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn and teachers Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall were killed at a Georgia high school last week during a shooting, while nine others were injured. Source: AAP / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Key Points

• The mother of the teenager charged with fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school called the school that morning.
• Marcee Gray spoke with a school counsellor and urged them to "immediately" find her son to check on him.
• She expressed remorse for the "pain and suffering" that the victims and their families are going through.

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

Annie Brown told the newspaper that her sister Marcee Gray, the mother of 14-year-old shooting suspect Colt Gray, texted her saying she spoke with a school counsellor and urged them to "immediately" find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screenshots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family's shared phone plan showed a call was made to Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, at 9.50am (local time), about 30 minutes before the attack began.

Gray declined to detail what prompted her call but told the Post 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 maths 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.

Mourners pray at a vigil at a park in Winder where a 14-year-old Apalachee High School student is accused of shooting and killing four people and injuring nine others. Source: AAP / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Colt Gray has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder. His father, Colin Gray, is accused of second-degree murder for providing his son with a semiautomatic AR 15-style rifle, 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.

'He gets flustered and under pressure'

In May 2023, investigators from a neighbouring 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 Georgia teenager had struggled with his parents' separation and taunting by classmates, his father told a sheriff's investigator last year when asked whether his son posted an online threat.

"I don't know anything about him saying (expletive) like that," Colin told Jackson County sheriff's investigator Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by the AP.

"I'm going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away."

He added: "He gets flustered and under pressure. He doesn't really think straight."

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