JEFFERSON, Ga. – The conversation on the porch of River Mist Circle, between two local sheriffs and a father and son, didn't have the feel of urgency. The tone was calm, cordial and hardly what you would imagine from an FBI tip about someone vowing to shoot up a local school with an AR-15 rifle.

"I gotta take you at your word and I hope you're being honest with me,” Jackson County Sheriff’s Investigator Daniel Miller Jr. said to Colt Gray, a soft-spoken 13-year-old who told the local officers he hoped to one day be a philosopher and that he had no intention of hurting anyone.

Nearly 16 months later, that interaction in Georgia sheds light on what the FBI, local sheriffs, and school officials knew about Gray – and his troubled family life – long before last week's deadly shooting of two teachers and two students at Apalachee High School. It also provides a glimpse into the world of police interaction with potential mass shooters, the clues that may emerge about them, and how the FBI and others investigate tips about possibly explosive school children across the nation.

Miller and Deputy Justin Elliott had asked numerous questions, according to a body camera transcript of the May 2023 conversation and others, including how the boy liked school, whether he was bullied and whether he spoke Russian. They asked about the foreign language because a threat on social media contained Russian and mentioned Adam Lanza, the gunman who killed 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

The officers visiting the teenager that day never went into the house after the boy's father, Colin Gray, mentioned he had weapons inside. Colin Gray told the officers they were used for hunting and were accessible to his son, who he admitted had some social awkwardness and trouble in school.

But the officers ended up clearing the case, even though Colt Gray, quiet and shy, said very little and did not articulate much in response to questions about his possible connection to online postings that threatened murder at a school.

When talking to the officers, Colt Gray denied being the one who made the threat on the Discord platform − and said he wasn't even aware of it. "No. The only thing I have is TikTok but I just go on there and watch videos," he told the officers.

And while he’d been bullied at school and sought counseling for it, the younger Gray told the investigators he would never commit such deadly violence and didn’t know anyone else who might. He did, however, speak of having to move six times and having difficulty making friends at some of the schools he attended.

"At the past school, surprisingly, I had friends," Colt Gray told the officers. "I didn't necessarily have a reason that I would say that," he continues, presumably referring to the school shooting threats. 

At the end of the brief interview, the sheriffs did not conclude there was any imminent danger, according to Jackson County records.

"I could not substantiate the tip," Miller wrote in a report he filed on the 2023 visit, obtained by USA TODAY. "At this time, due to the inconsistent nature of the information received by the FBI, the allegation that Colt or Colin is the user behind the Discord account that made the threat cannot be substantiated. This case will be exceptionally cleared."

'I'm a good boy, Daddy'

In a follow-up phone call from Miller, Colin Gray said his son was shocked by the police visitation. "He's like, I can't believe this is happening," Colin Gray recalled his son saying, according to an official police report. "He's like, I'm a good boy, Daddy. I would never do it."

His father insisted he couldn’t imagine his son doing anything like a school shooting. He did admit his son had social and classroom troubles, requiring Colin Gray's frequent visits to speak with school officials.

Colin Gray told the officers his son became flustered easily. He also acknowledged there were guns in the house. But he said Colt knew how to use them responsibly – and that he had recently used one of the weapons to kill his first deer on a father-son hunting trip.

Colt Gray was respectful throughout the officers' questions, saying “Oh, yes sir” and nodding his head when asked questions.

In the end, Miller and Elliott told the Grays that they were giving the father and son the benefit of the doubt and would say so in their report.

“I'm not saying you're lying,” said Miller, who did most of the questioning, “but it's not unusual for people to lie to the police. OK?”

'Pretty much unable to substantiate anything'

As they walked back to their respective patrol cars, Miller and Elliott appeared to consider the matter closed.

“You wanna knock out a report or want me to do it?” asked Miller.

“It don’t matter, this is just going to be an information or an agency assist. Made contact with these people. They had no idea,” replied Elliott, referring to the FBI, which had passed the threat information to Jackson County after receiving it from three different tipsters around the globe, including from Australia.

 “Pretty much unable to substantiate anything at this point,” Miller added.

 “No,” agreed Elliott.

“So until we get more information from this so-called tip from the FBI …” Miller said.

“We’ll just do an agency assist report for the FBI and write it up and I’ll be done,” Elliott said, finishing his partner’s sentence.

A mass shooting at Apalachee High raises questions

Nearly 16 months later, that initial visit is raising questions about whether the two officers and a broader array of police, school officials and family members, did all they could to avert the mass shooting at Apalachee High.

The signs were all there, according to some family members who said the boy had been crying out for help for months if not years. The boy’s maternal grandmother has told reporters that Colt was goaded into violence by a father who had gained custody of him when his mother suffered from problems related to drug addiction.

And last Wednesday, Colt Gray, now 14, allegedly used an AR-style weapon in a shooting similar to that cited in the threat posting in May 2023.

The boy surrendered almost immediately after the shootings in and outside an algebra classroom and was quickly taken into custody. He has been charged with four counts of murder and, despite his age of 14, will be prosecuted as an adult. If convicted, he faces life in prison without parole.

Colin Gray, 54, also has been arrested on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

"These charges stem from Mr. Gray knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon," GBI Director Chris Hosey said. "His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon."

'A school shooting at an unidentified location and time'

After the shooting, the FBI’s Atlanta field office issued a statement acknowledging that the bureau’s National Threat Operations Center had received “several anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting at an unidentified location and time” and had passed them along to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office “for action.”

“The online threats contained photographs of guns,” the FBI said.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have unsupervised access to them,” the FBI statement said. “The subject denied making the threats online. Jackson County alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”

But, the FBI concluded, “At that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”

A USA TODAY review of the body camera footage, though, suggests that the two deputies might have done more. They never asked, for instance, if the family had any AR-style weapons in the house.

“Colt stated he used to have a Discord account, but deleted it prior to moving from their previous address” because of concerns someone had hacked his account, Miller said in his “Investigator’s Face Sheet,” or informal report. “Colt expressed concern that someone is accusing him of threatening to shoot up a school, stating that he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner.”

As for the dad, Miller wrote, “Colin informed me that he does have firearms in the house, but that they are hunting rifles. He stated Colt is allowed to use them when supervised but does not have unfettered access.”

But in his final report, Elliott too appeared to consider the matter closed.

"The Juvenile appeared quit, calm and reserved while we spoke with him and Colin his father. Investigator Miller gave Colin a business card and request that the sheriff's office be contacted if the Juvenile or he remembers anything about comments being made on Discord," Elliott wrote in his "Miscellaneous Incident Report." After including the case numbers, he added, "We went back into service, nothing further to report at this time."

'A crucial failure'

Felipe Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former detective sergeant for the New York City Police Department, slammed the officers who interviewed Gray.

“They walked in there like it was their first day out of the academy,” said Rodriguez of the way the deputies took what the 13-year-old said at face value. “Good cops get facts and you corroborate it. When you don't corroborate it, that’s when you drop the ball and then we look like idiots.”

A crucial failure, he said, was not getting into the house where they could have verified the elder Gray’s guns were inaccessible or checked the house for cleanliness and whether there was enough food – red flags that would have prompted a call to child services. 

“That would have been the point to get some outside help, break the cycle and stop this incident,” Rodriguez said, adding that there were a “million and one ways into the house,” from simply saying that they needed water to following up on Gray’s interest in “philosophy” to see what he had written on the topic.

He added that the officers failed to ask either Gray for details on their answers or present the elder Gray with facts concerning the family’s own run-ins with the law, from 911 calls to an eviction a year earlier. 

Rodriguez also said Colt fit the profile of a mass shooter: a young, white, male, loner.

“We’re getting mass shooters left and right, you have to do whatever you can,” Rodriguez said. Instead, “they were talking and joshing like the kid stole a cupcake.”

'Easy in hindsight' to second-guess the police

Hindsight is always 20-20 given the tragic developments that came more than a year after Colt Gray and his father were interviewed, said former FBI supervisory agent and lawyer Katherine Schweit, now one of the foremost experts and authors on preventing active shootings at schools.

Schweit said the FBI did what it was supposed to do in these situations, which was to send the tip to local authorities who could investigate, take action if needed and report back.

And given the boy’s relatively calm demeanor, the father and son's denials and no outward signs of distress, it’s hard to pin the blame on the local investigators without knowing more, Schweit told USA TODAY.

“It's easy in hindsight to say the police should have read into this or that comment or should have interpreted that, or should have done these extra steps, but it's true that police deal with these types of situations on a nationwide basis every day, and they have to make a judgment call about whether they need to take further steps,” said Schweit, who created and led the FBI’s Active Shooter Program.

She now leads the anti-mass shooting advocacy and training organization “Stop the Killing” that she founded after leaving the FBI.

“Certainly, it would be helpful for the police to have guidelines on when they should turn to the school and the schools for when they should turn to the police” when faced with such threats, Schweit said.

“I think we continue to develop those but, clearly, the fact that this shooting occurred indicates to us that we need to do better," she said. "We just need to do better about communicating back and forth. It's not going to prevent every shooting, but it might give us a better chance to prevent some.”