First court appearance set for Georgia teen accused of killing 4 at his high school

WINDER, Ga. — The 14-year-old boy accused fatal shooting involving four people at a Georgia high school was scheduled to make his first court appearance on Friday, a day after his father was also arrested for allowing his son to possess a gun.

Colt Gray, who has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder, will appear via video from a juvenile detention center for the proceedings at the Barrow County Courthouse. The hearing will be held two days after authorities said the teen opened fire on Apalachee High School in Winder, just outside Atlanta.

The teenager’s father, Colin Gray, 54, was charged on Thursday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“His charges are directly tied to his son’s actions and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. Colin Gray’s initial court appearance has not yet been set.

Father and son have been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, Hosey said. Nine other people were injured, seven of them by shooting.

It’s the latest example of prosecutors holding parents accountable for their children’s actions in school shootings. In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted of mass school shooting in USThey were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not keeping a firearm at home and for being indifferent to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health. he killed four students in 2021.

Arrest warrants obtained by the AP accuse Colt Gray of using a semi-automatic assault rifle in the attack. Authorities have not offered a motive or explained how he obtained the weapon and got it into the school.

The teen denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities questioned him last year about a threatening social media post, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.

Conflicting evidence about the origin of the mail prevented investigators from making an arrest, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would have warranted charges at the time.

The attack was the last among the dozens of school shootings in the US in recent years, including the particularly deadly one in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; And Uvalde, TexasThe classroom killings have sparked heated debates about gun control, but little has changed in the nation’s gun laws.

It was the 30th mass murder in the US so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in cooperation with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in these killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

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Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporters Charlotte Kramon, Sharon Johnson, Mike Stewart and Erik Verduzco in Winder; Trenton Daniel and Beatrice Dupuy in New York; Eric Tucker in Washington; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed.