Father of Georgia school massacre suspect arrested for murder – The Irish Times

The father of the teenager accused of opening fire at a Georgia high school, killing four people and wounding nine, has been arrested on several charges, including second-degree murder.

Colin Gray (54), the father of Colt Gray, was charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of premeditated murder and eight counts of child abuse, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a social media post.

Further details were not initially announced, but a press conference was planned for later in the day.

In Georgia, second-degree murder means that a person caused the death of another person while committing second-degree cruelty to children, regardless of intent. The penalty for this is 10 to 30 years in prison, while premeditated murder and intentional homicide carry a minimum sentence of life in prison.

Authorities have charged 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult with murder in connection with the shooting at Apalachee High School outside Atlanta, Georgia.

Arrest warrants accuse him of using a semi-automatic assault rifle in the attack, in which two students and two teachers were killed and nine other people were injured.

According to a sheriff's report, the teenager denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities questioned him about a threatening social media post last year.

Due to conflicting information about the origin of the post, investigators were unable to arrest anyone, the report said.

Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing that would have warranted charges at that time.

“We didn't fail here at all,” Ms. Mangum said in an interview with the Associated Press. “We did everything we could with what we had at the time.”

When a sheriff's investigator from neighboring Jackson County interviewed Colt Gray last year, his father said the boy had struggled with his parents' separation and was often teased at school. The teen frequently fired guns and hunted with his father, who took photographs of him with deer blood on his cheeks.

“He knows how dangerous guns are, what they can do and how to use them and how not to use them,” Colin Gray said, according to a transcript from the sheriff's office.

Colt Gray is being held at a regional juvenile detention center on Thursday. His first court appearance was scheduled for Friday morning.

According to Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, he was charged with the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo (both 14), as well as teachers Richard Aspinwall (39) and Christina Irimie (53).

At least nine other people – eight students and a teacher at the school in Winder – were injured and taken to hospitals. All are expected to survive.

Authorities have not given a motive or explained how the suspect got the gun and brought it into the school of about 1,900 students in a rapidly developing area on the outskirts of metropolitan Atlanta. – AP