The father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspected of killing four people at Apalachee High School, was arrested Thursday, Georgia law enforcement officials said.

Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. An investigation is ongoing to determine whether the AR-style firearm was purchased by the boy’s father and given to him as a gift, sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News.

“These charges stem from the fact that Mr. Gray knowingly allowed his son, Colt, to possess a firearm,” Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, said at a Thursday evening news conference.

The shooting on Wednesday killed 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie. Nine other people were injured in the shooting — two teachers and seven students, officials said Thursday evening. There was some good news in Thursday’s update, as authorities said “all nine are expected to make full recoveries and be released from the hospital.”

Colt Gray will be tried as an adult. His arraignment is scheduled for Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Previous warnings

A Jackson County, Georgia, police report obtained by Yahoo News showed that users of the social media platform Discord contacted the FBI in May 2023, warning that someone was threatening to shoot up an unspecified high school in the area.

Hours after Colt Gray allegedly killed four people and wounded nine others at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Wednesday, the FBI’s Atlanta office said it had received anonymous tips and that Jackson County authorities were looking at Gray as a suspect.

“The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office located the potential perpetrator, a 13-year-old male, and interviewed him and his father,” the FBI wrote. “The father stated that he had a hunting gun in the home, but the perpetrator did not have free access to it. The perpetrator denied making threats online.”

Investigators spoke with the Grays in May 2023.

According to reports from Discord users, authorities went to the Grays’ home and spoke with both Colt, who was then 13 and a student at Jefferson Middle School in Georgia, and his father, Colin. Colin denied knowing what Discord was, and Colt said he had deactivated his Discord account several months earlier. Discord is a free messaging app used primarily in the gaming community.

“Colt expressed concern that someone was accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say something like that, even jokingly,” the report reads. “Colt stated that he stopped using Discord because too many people were hacking his account and he was worried that someone would use his information for nefarious purposes.”

The tip the FBI received about the Discord account said it was created in April 2023 — after Colt said he had deleted his account. Screenshots of the Discord account showed the username was in Russian, and the translation of the Russian letters was the name Lanza. Authorities believed it referred to Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who carried out the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.

“Due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI, the allegation that Colt or Colin is the user of the Discord account who made the threat cannot be substantiated,” the report concluded. “This matter will be investigated on an exceptional basis.”

“The threats were general and did not refer to a specific location or time,” a spokesperson for the FBI’s Atlanta division told Yahoo News on Thursday. “At this time, we have no further information to share beyond what was in our statement on our social media channels.”

New fees

While there is little precedent for prosecuting parents of minors involved in shootings, Michael Lawlor, an attorney and assistant professor of criminal law at the University of New Haven, pointed to the April conviction of Jennifer and James Crumbley, whose son, Ethan, killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021.

Lawlor said authorities must consider two key elements when deciding whether to pursue criminal charges against Gray’s parents in connection with the Apalachee shooting.

“If it can be proven that the 14-year-old actually had unfettered access to the AR-platform weapon used in the shooting (which would mean he lied to investigators in 2023) and if it can be proven that his parents knew about his murderous tweets, then a conviction is certainly possible,” Lawlor told Yahoo News before the announcement that Colin Gray had been charged.

The Crumbleys were accused of failing to properly secure a recently purchased firearm in the home that Ethan later brought to school, and of failing to take appropriate action when their son showed signs of mental deterioration, even after they were shown a violent and disturbing drawing of Ethan.

The Crumbleys were the first parents convicted of a mass school shooting in the US involving their child, and were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.

Under the law, a person convicted of involuntary manslaughter can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

President Biden appeared to address the issue Thursday afternoon in Westby, Wisconsin.

“There are too many people who have access to guns that they shouldn’t have access to. Let’s require that firearms be stored safely. I know I have mine locked up. How can you not have an assault rifle, a gun in your home, unlocked, and know that your child knows where it is? Parents need to be held accountable if they allow their children to have access to these weapons,” Biden said. Authorities have not said where Gray got the AR-style rifle he allegedly used in the shootings.