Not picking on you Beck, but it sure looks like the school had little to no chance. Although, perhaps, because we now know a lot more due to additional reporting.
During an interview with investigators in May 2023, Gray’s father, Colin Gray, said his 13-year-old son “had some problems” at a previous middle school he attended, according to investigative records.
The father told investigators – who were looking into threats of a school shooting made online – that the situation had “gotten a lot better” since his son began attending Jefferson Middle School. He had previously attended West Jackson Middle School.
The boy’s father said he and his wife divorced and his family had been evicted from a prior address. After the eviction, he and his son moved into a new home, and his wife moved elsewhere with their two younger children, the report said.
Gray recently began attending Apalachee High School in Barrow County, which sits to the south of Jackson County, between the cities of Atlanta and Athens.
Just snipping the section on his prior issues at school for fair use. So it looks like we’re talking three different schools in the immediate past - one where he was likely a known issue, one where he was doing better (both Middle) and his current High School (unclear if he’s a brand new freshman from reporting or upperclassman).
So the first middle school probably had good reason to know, second maybe, maybe not, but especially if a freshman, the High School may not have had a chance to evaluate the student past any reporting that was passed along. This did apparently happen on or near the first day of class.
Personally, I blame the shooter and his father first and foremost. The shooter, obviously, the father for his obviously fictional account of his son’s access to the existing firearms, followed by the unforgiveable sin of purchasing the new AR platform and not securing it.
I have some minor sympathy for the pre-shooter boy who had a terrible, abusive mother from current reporting, and who didn’t get the help they needed. But by the time they were (probably, not yet proven) lying to the FBI about the threats they were making online last year, that kid knew what he was doing. I’m not sorry that he’s being tried as an adult - and certainly not sorry that his father is being held accountable.
