Teen and father charged in Georgia school shooting appear in court for the first time

WINDER, Ga. —  The 14-year-old suspect in a Georgia high school shooting that killed four people appeared in court for the first time Friday, before his father was brought into the same courtroom for back-to-back hearings in which their lawyers declined to seek bail.

Colt Gray, who has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder, is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. His father, Colin Gray, faces related charges in the latest attempt by prosecutors to hold parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings.

“You don’t have to have been physically injured in this to be a victim,” Dist. Atty. Brad Smith said outside the Barrow County courthouse. “Everyone in this community is a victim. Every child in that school was a victim.”

Authorities have not offered any motive for the shooting or explained how the teenager got the rifle into the school.

Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, were killed in the attack, as were Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.

Additional charges will be filed against Colt Gray, Smith said. When the teenager was taken into custody Wednesday, authorities did not know the identities or conditions of the nine people injured in the attack, so they weren’t initially able to file charges related to those, he said.

After the hearing, the teen suspect was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles. The judge then called him 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 set another hearing for Dec. 4.

Shortly after the teen’s hearing, his father was brought into court. Dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform, Colin Gray answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age as 54 and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma.

Colin Gray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. Arrest warrants said he caused the deaths of others “by providing a firearm to Colt Gray with knowledge that he was threat to himself and others.”

The charges come just months after Jennifer and James Crumbley in Michigan became the first parents in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack. 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.

Authorities in Georgia interviewed the suspect in the Winder attack last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Colt Gray at the time denied threatening to carry out a school shooting. 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, Conn.; Parkland, Fla.; 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 the Associated Press 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.

On Friday, police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there have received threats of violence since the Georgia shooting. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week.

Amy, in Winder, Ga., and Martin, in Atlanta, write for the Associated Press. AP journalists 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, Ga.; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage contributed to this report.