ATLANTA (news agencies) — The mother of a student in class with the boy accused of killing four people in a Georgia high school shooting says information that school officials were warned that the boy was having a crisis shows the shooting could have been prevented.
“The school failed them, that they could have prevented these deaths and they didn’t,” Rabecca Sayarath said Sunday in a telephone interview with media. “I truly, truly feel that way.”
Sayarath’s daughter, Lyela, told reporters on Wednesday, the day of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, that administrators appeared to be looking for Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who has been charged with four counts of murder, before the gunfire began.
Others, though, are declining to blame school or law enforcement officials.
“I’m not going to referee or second-guess what happened with the authorities the other night,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I applaud our first responders. When others are running away from danger, they run toward the danger in order to do the best they can.”
Officials say Gray shot and killed students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and a teacher were injured — seven of them shot — and are expected to recover.
Annie Brown told The Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and warned staff of an “extreme emergency” before the killings. Brown said Marcee Gray urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.
Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school at 9:50 a.m. Warrants for Gray’s arrest say the shooting started at 10:20 a.m.
Brown confirmed the reporting to media on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.
Marcee Gray expressed remorse for the shootings Saturday to The Washington Post and The New York Post.
“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” Gray told The Washington Post in a text.
“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” Gray told The New York Post outside her father’s home in Fitzgerald, Georgia, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Atlanta.
Charles Polhamus, the boy’s grandfather, has told multiple news outlets that Marcee Gray got a text from her son on Wednesday saying he was sorry. Polhamus told CNN that Marcee Gray drove to Winder, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Fitzgerald, immediately after the shooting.
The Washington Post also reported that texts show relatives contacted the school about the boy’s mental health a week before the shooting, and that Brown told a relative he having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.” The newspaper reported that the teen’s grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, met with a school counselor to request help.
The boy “starts with the therapist tomorrow,” Polhamus wrote in a text to Brown after that meeting.
Investigators haven’t said what they believe might have motivated Gray or whether they believe he targeted particular victims.
Authorities have said Gray’s father, Colin Gray, gave him access to the semiautomatic AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting. It’s not clear how Gray brought the gun to campus or what he did with it in the two hours between school starting at 8:15 a.m. and when shots first rang out.
Colin Gray became the first parent of a school shooting suspect to be charged in Georgia, District Attorney Brad Smith said Friday. He’s accused of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children for providing his son with the rifle.
Colin Gray is jailed in Barrow County after declining to seek bail in a brief court hearing Friday in Winder. Colt Gray is being held in a juvenile detention center after declining to seek bail. Neither has been indicted or entered a plea.
Lyela Sayarath said Wednesday that Colt Gray had left her algebra classroom and that she believed he was skipping class.
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