Father of Accused Georgia Shooter Charged With Two Counts of Second-Degree Murder

The father of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at his Georgia high school was arrested and charged on Thursday with two counts of second-degree murder in connection with the attack, the state’s Bureau of Investigation said.

The father, Colin Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, officials said at a news conference on Thursday night.

The charges against Mr. Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Chris Hosey, the bureau director, said at the news conference. He declined to provide details, including what evidence had given the authorities probable cause to charge Mr. Gray in the attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.

Earlier on Thursday, Charlie Polhamus, the teenager’s maternal grandfather, said he believed his grandson was responsible for what happened, but he also cast some of the blame on the tumult in the teenager’s home life with his father, who had split from Mr. Polhamus’s daughter. “My grandson did what he did because of the environment that he lived in,” Mr. Polhamus said.

When investigators looking into an online threat spoke to Mr. Gray last year, he said he had been teaching his son, then 13, about hunting and guns to divert his attention from video games. The teenager denied making the threat to “shoot up a middle school” and claimed his account on the social media platform Discord had been hacked, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview.

Mr. Gray told the investigator that he had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He also suggested that he had emphasized the dangers of using a firearm.