First court date for Georgia teenager accused of killing four people at his high school

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

Colt Gray, who is charged as an adult with four counts of murder, will appear by video from a juvenile detention center for arraignment at the Barrow County Courthouse two days after authorities say the teenager opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, just outside Atlanta.

The teenager's father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, was charged Thursday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of premeditated murder and eight counts of child abuse, according to Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

“His charges are directly related to his son's actions and permission to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. Colin Gray's first court date has not yet been set.

Father and son were accused of killing two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and teachers Richard Aspinwall (39) and Cristina Irimie (53), Hosey said. Nine other people were injured, seven of them shot.

It is the latest example of prosecutors blaming parents for their children's actions in school shootings. In April, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first to be convicted in a U.S. school massacre, sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to secure a firearm at home and reacting indifferently to signs of their son's deteriorating mental health before 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 given a motive or explained how he obtained the weapon and brought it to the school.

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

Due to conflicting evidence 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 the time.

The attack was the latest of dozens of school shootings in the United States in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have sparked heated debates about gun control, but there have been few changes to national gun laws.

According to a database maintained by the Associated Press and USA Today in collaboration with Northeastern University, it was the 30th mass murder in the United States this year. At least 127 people died in these killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within 24 hours, not including the killer – the same definition used by the FBI.

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Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers 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.