The father of the teenager charged in Georgia’s deadliest school shooting told investigators Searching for risk online Last year he was teaching his son about guns and hunting, and the boy claimed his account had been hacked.

According to a transcript of a May 2023 interview obtained by The New York Times, the father, Colin Gray, said, “I’d be mad as hell if he did that”. “Then all the guns will go off,” he added.

Expulsion records last year showed Mr. Gray was in possession of several weapons, including an AR-15, the type of firearm authorities say was used in Wednesday morning’s shooting at Appalachian High School in Winder, Ga. was used.

Mr. Gray said he wanted to keep his son Colt, now 14, interested in outdoor sports and away from video games, according to a transcript of the interview. The 13-year-old son had recently shot his first deer, and his father had a photo on his phone of the animal’s blood on the boy’s cheeks, a common tradition among hunters.

Mr Gray said he and his son often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happened”. He told a Jackson County Sheriff’s Office investigator: “He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them.”

Mr. Gray said his son was picked up during the last three months of the school year, which had just ended at the time of the interview. He said the problems escalated to the point where he had difficulty concentrating on his final exams.

Mr. Gray said he often visited his son’s middle school, talked to the principal and asked for help. “He gets anxious and stressed,” she said of the boy. “He doesn’t really think straight.”

The investigator was searching. Tips for posting to a chat group on the social media site Discord about the school shooting. The post, which was reported to the FBI, was linked by investigators to an account linked to Mr. Gray’s son.

Mr. Gray said in a follow-up phone call with an investigator that he didn’t know much about Discord, and that he told his son to “dumb it down for me.” He said his son had told him about people called “raiders” who could break into other people’s Discord accounts. Mr Gray said his son had explained.

The son told the investigator that he had not used Discord for months and was only on TikTok to watch videos. The investigator asked the young man, who had just finished seventh grade, to focus on getting good grades.

“It will set you up for the rest of your life,” she said.

In a follow-up phone call with Mr. Gray, an investigator told him he wasn’t sure they’d be able to get to the bottom of who made the post on Discord. He reassured the father that he did not think his son was being dishonest, and encouraged him to make sure his son’s identity was not stolen.

Mr Gray said his son was eager to resolve the situation. “He wants to know what happened,” she told the investigator.