September 16, 2024
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting at a Georgia high school that killed four people and his father will both stay in custody following back-to-back court hearings Friday morning where their lawyers declined to seek bail.
At 14-year-old Colt Gray's hearing, the teen was advised of his rights along with the charges and penalties he faced.
After the hearing, the teen was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles in khaki pants and a green shirt. The judge then called Colt Gray back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole. The judge also set another hearing for Dec. 4.
Shortly after Colt Gray's hearing, his father, Colin Gray, was brought into court. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack.
Colin Gray, dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform at Friday's hearing, answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma.
About 50 onlookers were in the courtroom for the hearings, in addition to news media and sheriff’s deputies. Some family members of victims in the front row hugged each other and one woman clutched a stuffed animal.
Before the hearings at the Barrow County courthouse, court workers set out boxes of tissue along courtroom benches, and relatives and community members began to trickle into the courtroom Friday morning in advance of the hearings for the son and father.
According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a semiautomatic rifle to kill two students and two teachers at the school. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school.
Colin Gray was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting, including with counts of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said.
It’s the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings. In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.
Colt Gray was charged as an adult with four counts of murder in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
The teen denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.
Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.
