The mother of the Georgia shooting suspect called the school 30 minutes warning of an “extreme emergency” before he allegedly opened fire there, his aunt has claimed.

Colt Gray, 14, is accused of shooting dead two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta, on Wednesday.

Another teacher and a further eight students were injured but are expected to make a full recovery, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Annie Brown, the teenager’s aunt, has said her sister called the school counsellor half an hour before gunfire broke out.

She told the Washington Post the boy’s mother warned of an “extreme emergency” involving her son and that they needed to find him “immediately”.

Phone records shared with the newspaper, and later confirmed by the Associated Press, show a 10-minute call was made from the family’s shared phone plan to the school at that time.