On Friday, the 14-year-old kid who is suspected of shooting four people to death at a high school in Georgia is scheduled to appear in court for the first time. His father was also arrested the same day for permitting his son to have a handgun.
Colt Gray, who is being prosecuted as an adult on four counts of murder, will attend the proceedings at the Barrow County courthouse via video feed from a juvenile detention center. Two days after the juvenile allegedly opened fire at Winder, Georgia’s Apalachee High School, just outside of Atlanta, authorities said, a hearing is scheduled.
Colin Gray, 54, the teen’s father, was charged on Thursday with eight counts of child abuse, two counts of second-degree murder, and four counts of involuntary manslaughter by Chris, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
“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.
According to Hosey, a father and son are accused of being involved in the deaths of teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, as well as students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14 years old. Seven of the other nine injured individuals were shot.
This is just one more instance of prosecutors holding parents accountable for the deeds of their kids during school shootings. The first two parents found guilty in a mass school shooting in the United States were Jennifer and James Crumbley of Michigan in April. Before their son killed four students in 2021, they failed to secure a firearm at home and disregarded warning indicators of their son’s declining mental health. For these actions, they received a minimum 10-year prison sentence.
Colt Gray is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style weapon in the arrest warrants that the AP was able to obtain. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun and got it into the school.
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.
The article indicated that investigators were unable to make any arrests because of conflicting information regarding the post’s origin. According to Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum, upon reviewing the May 2023 report, she could not find any evidence that would have supported filing charges at that time.
Numerous school shootings have occurred in the United States in recent years, with the most recent one occurring in Uvalde, Texas; Parkland, Florida; and Newtown, Connecticut, being the most lethal. Although passionate discussions about gun control have been sparked by the school killings, little has changed in terms of federal gun legislation.
According to a database that The Associated Press and USA Today, in collaboration with Northeastern University, are maintaining, it was the thirty-first mass killing in the United States this year. There are at least 127 fatalities 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.
(AP)
