WINDER, Ga. (news agencies) — The 14-year-old accused of fatally shooting four people at his high school in Georgia was expected to make his first court appearance Friday, a day after his father was also arrested for allowing his son to have a weapon.
According to arrest warrants obtained by media, Colt Gray is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how Gray obtained the gun or got it into the school.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, 54, 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.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. Colin Gray’s first court appearance has not been set.
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 — who 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 — will appear by video from a youth detention facility for the proceedings at the Barrow County courthouse.
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.
The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws.
It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by media and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those 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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