The 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school this week had transferred to a different middle school, attracting the attention of authorities who suspected him of making online threats to carry out school shootings.
His mother had repeated encounters with the police and was ordered to stay away from drugs and alcohol. His family had been evicted from their home for non-payment of rent, and his parents had separated.
Interviews with relatives and others who knew the teenager, as well as a review of court and police records, suggested the family was in constant turmoil in the years leading up to this week's shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder.
The suspect, Colt Gray, has been charged with four counts of murder in the attack on Wednesday morning that killed two students and two math teachers and injured eight others. At his first court appearance on Friday, a judge told him he could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
His father, Colin Gray, is charged with second-degree murder and other charges. Officials argue he bears significant culpability for giving his son the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used in the attack. The weapon was a Christmas gift last year, according to three law enforcement officials. Mr. Gray, 54, faces a maximum sentence of 180 years in prison if convicted.
During the brief hearing on Friday, the relatives of those killed sat directly behind the defendants, just a few meters away. The grief that the community in Winder is now grappling with was palpable.
Within hours of Wednesday's shooting, the FBI disclosed the previous threats the teen may have made. The FBI said he was questioned more than a year ago after informants in an online chat group reported threats to “shoot up a middle school.” The posts included photos of guns, officials said.
The case was forwarded to the sheriff's office in Jackson County, Georgia, near Winder, where the boy and his father lived at the time. The boy denied making the threats, which were posted on the social media platform Discord; he suspected his account may have been hacked. The father told investigators that his son did not have “unfettered” access to weapons in the house.
The father also told them that he would be “furious” if his son had made the online threat and that “then all the weapons would disappear.”
Investigators ultimately concluded that “the threat cannot be substantiated,” their report said.
But in interviews they conducted with the father, transcripts of which were released this week, he described the problems his son had in school. At a middle school in Jackson County, other students “ridiculed him day in and day out,” the father said.
In the eighth grade, the boy moved to a new school where, according to his father, the problems were less serious.
But school was not the only cause of the family's problems.
The father described coming home one day in 2022 to find his belongings piled up outside and an eviction in progress.
“I wonder what they're doing,” he told an investigator. “I don't even know why you're all here.”
They had lived in a 2,500-square-foot house in a development called Traditions, where rolling hills are dotted with sleek new homes, sprawling gardens and amenities such as a pool, tennis courts and a golf course.
But the family fell behind on rent, court records show, and their landlord began eviction proceedings in February 2022 when they owed $3,634. Months later, the unpaid rent had risen to more than $11,000.
Records show that their belongings, which were dragged into the yard during the eviction in August, included several firearms, hunting bows and a lot of ammunition.
When the parents separated around that time, the father apparently took informal custody of the son while the two younger children lived with the mother, Marcee Gray, the father told investigators.
Father and son moved into a modest home off a country road in neighboring Barrow County, where Colt Gray entered Apalachee High School as a freshman early last month.
According to court records, Ms. Gray has a criminal history spanning several years, including a guilty plea to criminal damage and “trespassing/domestic violence.” She was also ordered by the court to repay money to a car dealership after it wrote a bad check for $10,000 to buy a used Chevrolet Suburban, records show.
Arrest warrants say small amounts of methamphetamine, fentanyl and muscle relaxants were found on Ms. Gray in November, but she was not charged with drug possession, according to court records.
After pleading guilty to criminal damage and trespassing charges, she was sentenced in December to a five-year prison term consisting of 46 days in jail and probation for the remainder of the term, according to court records. As part of the plea, she was ordered to pay restitution to an Atlanta construction company and was ordered to have no direct contact with her estranged husband.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Ms. Gray was charged in April in Ben Hill County with aggravated assault on a 73-year-old woman, along with other charges including theft, false imprisonment and trespassing.
She lives in Ben Hill County, several hours southeast of Atlanta and about 190 miles from Winder. When a reporter knocked on her door on Thursday, she refused to talk; attempts to speak to the suspect's father were also unsuccessful.
The suspect's father told investigators last year that he introduced his son to weapons and hunting in order to build a bond with him and lure him out of his shell.
But Charlie Polhamus, the boy's maternal grandfather, said his father gave him too much leeway with the weapons. Even before the charges against the father were announced on Thursday, he argued that the elder Gray shared responsibility for the attack.
“I understand that my grandson did it – I understand that,” said 81-year-old Polhamus in a brief interview. “But he wouldn't have done it if he hadn't had a father like him. I can't put it more simply.”
Johnny Kauffman contributed reporting from Fitzgerald, Georgia, and Richard Fausset from Atlanta.
