Father, son charged in Georgia school shooting appear in court

The 14-year-old boy accused of killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia appeared before Judge Currie M. Mingledorff II on Friday.

The victims of Wednesday’s shooting were Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie.

The teenager, identified as Colt Gray, faces four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult. He made his first appearance Friday.

His father, Colin Gray, appeared at his side Friday in the case. The father is charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder.

According to the Associated Press, at a news conference, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said the charges against the father were “directly related to the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon.”

Gray, who is also charged with child cruelty, faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted. His arrest reflects a growing trend of holding parents responsible for their children’s involvement in school shootings.

According to KSL.com, Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley, who were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for their son’s 2021 murders of four students, were the first to use the practice. They were accused of not having a gun in the home and acting with indifference to their son’s deteriorating mental health.

Questions remain about how Wednesday’s tragedy could have happened, particularly because police knew the accused teenager was interested in mass shootings. A year earlier, he was questioned by police after the FBI received information that he had threatened online to shoot up a school.

However, according to a statement from the Atlanta FBI, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office determined there was “no probable cause to arrest” at the time.

The accused denied the charges when questioned, and the father told police that although there were hunting weapons in the house, his son did not have unsupervised access to them.

The teenager’s maternal grandfather, Charlie Polhamus, partly blamed the tragedy on the father, citing the teenager’s difficult upbringing, whose parents are divorced.

“My grandson did what he did because of the environment he lived in,” Polhamus said, according to The New York Times.

In court, Mingledorff informed the 14-year-old that he would not face the death penalty because of his age, but that he could spend life in prison.

Preliminary hearings for the father and son are scheduled for December 4.