Denver — Parents of a 16-year-old boy Two high school students were injured in Colorado With an antique gun that his family said was kept in a locked gun cabinet, he will not be charged with any crimes, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators are looking into whether the parents of Desmond Holley, who killed himself after the shooting, can be charged with allowing access to Smith. & Wesson .38 rifle or for not storing it securely, but determined there was not enough evidence to do so, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
Holley shot himself after opening fire at Evergreen High School on September 10 and later died.
Investigators did not find the parents’ DNA on the gun after obtaining a court order to collect DNA samples from them, the sheriff’s office said. The family’s attorney recently told investigators that the gun, described as a family heirloom that had belonged to an ancestor, was stored near the back of a large, locked gun safe, the office said. Holly was only able to access the safe for brief periods when his father opened it, according to the lawyer.
The family believes Holley secretly took the gun, which was never used, from the safe while cleaning other firearms with his father, the family’s attorney, Douglas Richards, told The Associated Press.
“His disappearance did not come to light until after the tragedy occurred,” Richards said.
The sheriff’s office said investigators were unable to speak with the parents. Richards said the parents spoke with authorities immediately after the shooting and later answered questions in writing because he did not want to conduct further interviews with them unless a prosecutor was present.
Investigators believe Holley randomly shot students at the high school in the foothills about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Denver, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jackie Kelly said Wednesday.
At the time, the Sheriff’s Office said Holley had been radicalized through an unspecified “extremist network.”
Kelly said the investigation showed Holley was obsessed with other school shooters and was involved with a mix of online groups but was not committed to any particular type of extremism. She referred further questions about those findings to the FBI, which handled that part of the investigation. The agency said the reporter would have to file a records request to obtain more information.
A A report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism It found that Holly was active in an online forum where users watched videos of killings and violence, mixed with content related to white supremacy and anti-Semitism. It found that Holly was also fascinated by previous mass shootings including 1999 Columbine High School Massacre it 14 people were killedabout 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Evergreen.