(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The student who opened fire at a Georgia high school and killed four people on Wednesday has been identified as 14-year-old Colt Gray, who now faces four counts of felony murder.
Gray is set to appear in court Friday. According to CNN, he will remain in the custody of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice until his 17th birthday.
Meanwhile, WSB-TV in Atlanta reportedly obtained a copy of the investigative report from May 2023, when Gray allegedly made online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time. The FBI says it received anonymous tips about those threats, and referred them to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, which interviewed Gray but took no further action.
There he is Colt Gray… pic.twitter.com/sNmhW5qBON
— Defiant World (@DefiantWorld) September 5, 2024
It turns out, according to WSB-TV, the FBI found out about Gray’s threats by monitoring Discord—a gaming platform where federal agents and bad actors have targeted, and at times, groomed gamers to commit acts of terrorism.
“An FBI agent monitoring the social media platform Discord had gotten the information about Colt Gray’s potential school shooting,” WSB-TV reported Thursday, citing the incident report.
“When deputies arrived at the home, they found Colin Gray and his son, Colt. The teen told them he deleted his Discord account before he and his father moved to their new home,” WSB-TV said.
According to WSB-TV, the Jackson County incident report stated that “Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner.”
WSB-TV also revealed that Colt Gray lied to law enforcement.
“Further investigation of the Discord account showed that the account was made after when the teen said he’d deleted his account,” the news outlet reported.
Perhaps more disturbing was Gray’s interests on Discord. The incident report reportedly states that Colt’s Discord account had a user name “written in Russian. Translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza, who is the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter in Newton, Conn.”
Gray’s account also reportedly was linked to a variety of IP addresses, ranging from different parts of Georgia and locations in New York and Virginia.
FBI on Discord
Headline USA has reported extensively on how mass shooters have used Discord. Most recently, Trump shooter Thomas Crooks was revealed to have an account on that platform.
NBC News reported in April 2023 that the Biden White House is “looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track.”
🤔 https://t.co/5glul3C46j pic.twitter.com/wd4oEEofQD
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) September 5, 2024
Around that same time last year, investigative reporter Lee Fang also published a story about how the U.S. government is partnering with private intelligence firms to spy on gaming chatrooms—revealing that the online spooks are particularly interested in conducting surveillance on teenagers.
Fang quoted an unnamed official from the Israeli threat intelligence firm CyberInt, who said: “I prefer to detect threat actors when they’re young or starting out at 14 or 15. That’s when I start observing and documenting their malicious activities. Because when they’re at that age or stage in their career, they’re a lot more careless and open. They tend to show off more.”
The latest information on the government’s targeting of gamers came in February, when the Government Accountability Office reported that the FBI increased its efforts last year to infiltrate gaming servers.
“Officials said in 2023, the FBI worked to increase engagement with gaming and gaming-adjacent companies for the annual meeting and on outreach efforts with the program manager,” the GAO report said.
“Officials said that as the FBI works with more companies, it continues to learn how companies operate, the type of behavior and content companies see on their platforms, and the extent to which companies report information as tips.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
