Photo shows baseball player, not Georgia shooting suspect | Fact check

[En Español: No, foto viral no es del sospechoso de tiroteo en escuela de Georgia]
A Sept. 5 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) features a picture of a boy in a baseball cap.
“Who is Colt Gray, the 14-year-old suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia?” reads on-screen text in Spanish.
The post was liked more than 50 times in six days. Similar posts were shared on Threads and X, formerly Twitter.
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The boy pictured in the post is not the suspected shooter. He shares the same name as the suspected shooter but is from Oklahoma, not Georgia. A baseball scout confirmed the person in the photo is not the shooting suspect.
Officials identified the suspect in the Sept. 4 school shooting that killed four people at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, as 14-year-old Colt Gray. The teen was previously tied to online threats reported anonymously to the FBI in 2023.
But the photo in the post shows a different Colt Gray, a baseball player from Oklahoma who participates in Prep Baseball, an organization that scouts and promotes amateur baseball players.
“The photo that was getting posted online is not the kid that was involved in the shooting,” Scott Hood, former state director for Prep Baseball in Oklahoma, told USA TODAY. “They have the same name and appear like they might be the same age. But it’s wrong – wrong state, wrong kid.”
Fact check: Photo shows suspect in active shooter simulation, not Georgia school
The photo used in the post matches the one used on Prep Baseball’s website, according to an archived version of the page, which has since been deleted. The boy’s name is listed as Colt Gray, but the picture does not resemble the shooting suspect’s mugshot.
USA TODAY has debunked multiple false claims about mass shooting suspects, including that another photo shows the suspect in the Georgia school shooting and that an image shows the suspect in the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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