Colt Gray: Georgia shooting suspect’s mother ‘called school 30 minutes before’ attack
The mother of the Georgia shooting suspect called the school 30 minutes warning of an “extreme emergency” before he allegedly opened fire there, his aunt has claimed.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of shooting dead two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta, on Wednesday.
Another teacher and a further eight students were injured but are expected to make a full recovery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Annie Brown, the teenager’s aunt, has said her sister called the school counsellor half an hour before gunfire broke out.
She told the Washington Post the boy’s mother warned of an “extreme emergency” involving her son and that they needed to find him “immediately”.
Phone records shared with the newspaper, and later confirmed by the Associated Press, show a 10-minute call was made from the family’s shared phone plan to the school at that time.
Colt Gray at Barrow County courthouse on Friday. Pic: AP
Gray appeared in court on Friday when he was charged as an adult with the murders of Mason Schermerhorn, 14, Christian Angulo, 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
His father Colin Gray, 54, also appeared in court and has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder for allowing his son to get hold of a weapon.
Colin Gray. Pic: Barrow County Sheriff’s Office
Father interviewed over shooting threats last year
Colin Gray was interviewed by police last year over threats his son made on the gaming platform Discord that he might carry out a shooting.
He told officials he had hunting guns locked in a safe in the family home – but his son did not have access to them.
Read more
What we know about Colt Gray
School shooting victims named
He said the teenager had struggled with his parents’ separation and often got picked on at school.
“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” the boy’s father said, according to a transcript of the interview.
He also mentioned his son becoming “flustered under pressure” and “not really thinking straight”.
“I don’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him,” he told investigators in May 2023.
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School shooting suspect previously investigated
But ultimately the case was closed after neither Colt nor Colin Gray were successfully linked to the Discord account the threats were made from.
There were no grounds to confiscate the family’s guns either, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office.
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Colin Gray bought his son an AR-style rifle as a gift after the pair were questioned, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
On Friday a judge ruled that the teenager would not face the death penalty because, as a juvenile, the maximum sentence he can receive is life without parole.
US
Man who died after being pulled into MRI machine was wearing 9kg weight-training chain, wife reveals
A man who died after being pulled into an MRI machine in New York was wearing a large weight-training chain around his neck, his wife has said.
Keith McAllister, 61, entered a room at the Nassau Open MRI clinic while a scan of his wife’s knee was under way.
The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by the 9kg metal chain around his neck, according to Nassau County Police.
His wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, said she had called out to her husband to help her off the table.
“I yelled out Keith’s name, [shouting] Keith, come help me up,” she said in an interview with News 12 Long Island.
She said her husband entered the room wearing the chain, which he uses for weight training.
“I saw the machine snatch him around and pull him into the machine,” Ms Jones-McAllister said as tears streamed down her face. “He died, he lost, he went limp in my arms.”
Police said that the accident last Wednesday “resulted in a medical episode” and left Mr McAllister in a critical condition in hospital.
Ms Jones-McAllister said her husband had suffered a series of heart attacks after he was freed from the MRI machine. He was later pronounced dead.
A file picture of an MRI scanner
MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The machines use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed images of the inside of the body.
Due to the magnetic fields, “very powerful forces” are exerted on objects made of iron, some steels, and other magnetic materials, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering says.
It says the forces are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room”.
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Sky News’ US partner network NBC New York reported that MRI accidents are rare but can be fatal.
It is not the first time someone has been killed by an MRI machine in New York.
In 2001, six-year-old Michael Colombini died at the Westchester Medical Centre when an oxygen tank flew into the chamber, drawn in by the MRI’s 10-ton electromagnet.
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