‘This Should Have Never Happened’: Green Country Teen's Photo Misused On Social Media

A Green Country family is fighting posts made on social media using their 14-year-old son's photo.

Their 14-year-old has the same name as the teen arrested in the Georgia school shooting but lives in Oklahoma.

“This should have never happened,” said Colt Gray.

Colt's baseball picture has been used in posts all over Facebook and X claiming he is the teen behind the Georgia massacre.

“I had been on Facebook about an hour prior to that and had seen, you know, that there was a shooting, but it was an hour later, whenever I started getting the messages from strangers telling me that my son's photo was, you know, attached to this shooting, saying he was the shooter in Georgia, even though we live here in Oklahoma,” said Jessie Gray, Colt's mother.

We are not sharing Colt's picture because it would make the issue worse. His parents have been scrambling since Wednesday to get the posts taken down and the photo scrubbed from the internet.

“Some have been taken down, some are still out there,” said Jessie.

Colt's mom has even been getting threats, some going as far as calling her.

“All the emotions I have gone through. Being mad, being stressed, scared, sad, worried, but yes, mad,” said Jessie.

Other than reporting and flagging these posts, the Grays don't really know what else to do.

“He's 14. He's still a kid,” Jessie said. “So I think changes need to be made there. But also whenever people are posting pictures that are completely false, if it's proven that it's false, it needs to be taken down. It needs to be mass taken down throughout all of the shares and everything where it's been posted.”

“Why should someone have to go through this if they didn't do anything?” said Colt.

Cybersecurity experts say once a photo like this is shared it is difficult to get it taken down.

You might be able to take legal action if you can prove where the photo and misinformation originated.