Teenager accused of killing 4 people set to appear in court

Published on September 6, 2024 at 2:03 p.m.

WINDER, Ga. — The 14-year-old boy accused of shooting four people to death at his 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 have a gun.

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, near Atlanta. Nine people were also injured in Wednesday’s attack. Authorities have not provided a motive or explained how Gray obtained the weapon or brought it into the school.

The teen’s father, Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting with counts including involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.

“The charges against him are directly related to his son’s actions and the permitting of possession of a weapon,” Hosey said. Colin Gray’s first court appearance has not yet been scheduled.

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 became the first people convicted in a school shooting in the United States. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to secure a gun in their home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.

Colt Gray 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.

A neighbor remembers Schermerhorn as an inquisitive boy. Aspinwall and Irimie were both math teachers, and Aspinwall also helped coach the school’s soccer team. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at a local church, where she taught dance.

Gray will appear by video from a youth detention center for the proceedings at the Barrow County Courthouse.

The teenager denied threatening to commit a school shooting when authorities questioned him last year about a threatening social media post, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.

Conflicting evidence about the message’s origin prevented investigators from arresting 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 is the latest in a string of dozens of school shootings in the United States in recent years, including particularly deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas. Such classroom killings have sparked fierce debates over gun control, but the nation’s gun laws have barely changed.

It was the 30th mass shooting in the United States 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 the killings, defined as events in which four or more people die in a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

This booking image provided by the Barrow County, Georgia, Sheriff’s Office shows Colt Gray, 14, who has been charged as an adult with murder in the Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. BARROW COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE via AP

Students and their parents leave the campus of Apalachee High School Wednesday in Winder, Ga. AP PHOTO/MIKE STEWART