The father of the teenager accused of Georgia’s deadliest school shooting told investigators looking into an online threat last year that he had been teaching his son about guns and hunting, and that the boy claimed that his account had been hacked.

“I’m going to be mad as hell if he did” make threats about a school shooting, said the father, Colin Gray, according to a transcript of the May 2023 interview obtained by The New York Times. “Then all the guns will go away,” he added.

Records from an eviction the previous year show that Mr. Gray owned several weapons, including an AR-15, the type of firearm that officials say was used in the shooting on Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.

Mr. Gray said he wanted to get his son, Colt, now 14, interested in the outdoors, and away from video games, according to the interview transcript. The son, then 13, had recently shot his first deer, and his father kept a photo on his phone of the animal’s blood smeared on the boy’s cheeks — a common tradition among hunters.

Mr. Gray said that he and his son had often discussed “all the school shootings, things that happen.” He told the investigator with the Jackson County sheriff’s office: “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 had been picked on during the last three months of the school year, which had just ended at the time of the interview. The problems had escalated to the point where he had trouble concentrating on his final exams, he said.