Georgia School Shooter Had Been Flagged to the FBI and Interviewed a Year Ago

AP Photo/Jeff Amy

There were several updates on this case last night including the identification of the four victims. One was a math teacher who also worked as a football coach.

Ricky Aspinwall, a 39-year-old husband and father of two young daughters, taught math at Apalachee High School, where he was also the football team’s defensive coordinator. 

Mike Hancock, the school’s head football coach, told the Athens Banner-Herald that Aspinwall was "a great dad" who loved his wife and their two daughters and was also respected in the game of football.

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The other adult victim was math teacher Christina Irimie. There were also two 14-year-old students killed, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn. Here are photos of all four of them.

As we've seen in other shootings like this, it turns out the shooter had been on the FBI's radar for more than a year. In fact, he was interviewed by local law enforcement last May in connection with anonymous threats.

In a joint statement, the FBI's Atlanta field office and Jackson County Sheriff's Office said the agency's National Threat Operations Center received an anonymous tip about threats posted online regarding a possible school shooting in May 2023.

The agencies said that the threats contained images of guns.

Within 24 hours of receiving the anonymous tip, investigators determined the threats originated in Georgia and the matter was referred to the sheriff’s office.

"The Jackson County Sheriffs’ Office located a possible subject, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father," the FBI said.

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That 13-year-old student was Colt Gray, who was identified as the shooter yesterday. At the time of the interview, Gray denied sending the threats and claimed the email connected to the threats had been hacked.

The threatening comments were made on the social media platform Discord from an account associated with an email address that the FBI believed was owned by the teen, the records say. The teen, Colt Gray, told officers he had previously used Discord but got rid of his account months earlier “because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” the records show.

The account flagged by the FBI featured a profile name written in Russian that, when translated, spelled out “Lanza,” referring to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter, according to the records.

The Sheriffs Office decided there was no cause to arrest him and closed the case. His father said he did keep guns in the house for hunting but also said his then 13-year-old son had no unsupervised access to them. 

Authorities supposedly warned schools to keep an eye on him. At the time, he was 13 and in Middle School. His family lived in Jackson County. This year he was a 14-year-old freshmen at Apalachee High School which is in Barrow County. It makes me wonder if his new school ever received that warning.

The FBI is now said to be reviewing Gray's recent social media history to try to determine a motive.

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Finally, CNN is reporting that the school got a tip yesterday morning that there was going to be a school shooting at this school.

Before the mass shooting, Apalachee High School had received a phone threat earlier that morning, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN.

The phone call warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. But it’s unclear who placed that call.

In an on air interview, a mother whose daughter attends the school claimed that someone had been sent to find a particular student just 15 minutes before the shooting started. But according to her they got the wrong student or had the wrong name. She also said the school is claiming that was unrelated to the shooting.

Obviously this raises a lot of questions, starting with: Why didn't they lock down the school after receiving that threat? Also, I've seen an interview in which a student mentions seeing multiple cops in the building just before the shooting started. Had they been called in because of the threat?

I don't want to speculate too much but this is obviously something that needs to be nailed down by investigators. Not only do we need to confirm who made the call, we need to know exactly what steps were taken in response.

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Update: I think we all saw this coming.

Police found evidence of the suspect’s interest in mass shootings during a search of his room on Wednesday, according to the two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. The 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida that drew his particular interest left 17 people dead.

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