Georgia school shooter Colt Gray made his first court appearance Friday, a day after his father was also arrested for allowing his son to have a gun.
The 14-year-old is accused of using a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta, on Wednesday.
His father, Colin Gray, 53, is due to appear shortly after his son in the same court, charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two of second-degree murder and eight of child cruelty.
The teen appeared in person at Barrow County Superior Court in shackles, wearing a green T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He was handcuffed in front of his body and looked down, his hair covering his face, throughout the hearing.
He spoke only quietly to Judge Mingledorff, answering “yes, sir” when asked to confirm his name, that he was literate and that he had the right to a lawyer.
Georgia school shooter Colt Gray made his first court appearance Friday. The teen looked down and his hair covered his face during the hearing.
Gray was arrested Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, minutes after authorities said he opened fire on students and teachers, killing four. Colt allegedly told police “I did it” when they read him his Miranda rights.
Dozens of emotional family members filled the courtroom during the Grays’ first appearances, some visibly crying even before the hearing began.
Some wore sunglasses to cover their faces and were supported by detectives in the courtroom.
The teenager is being represented by Zain Harman and has been warned he could face the death penalty for the charges.
Relatives of the father and son did not appear to be supportive in the courtroom.
Gray looked down at his feet as he entered the courtroom, staring intently at the judge as he spoke during the short 8-minute hearing.
His father will be provided with an alternative attorney for his son, following his arrest on Thursday afternoon.
His father, Colin Gray, 54, is accused of buying his 14-year-old son Colt the AR-15-style rifle the boy used and was arrested Thursday on multiple counts of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children.
This comes after the teenager immediately surrendered to officers who confronted him during the violent attack, which authorities suspect he had been planning for years.
The teen’s father was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting, including charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.
“The charges against him are directly related to his son’s actions and allowing him to possess a gun,” Hosey said. A date for Colin Gray’s first court appearance has not yet been set.
Gray was arrested Wednesday minutes after authorities said he opened fire on students and teachers, killing four. Colt reportedly told police “I did it” when he was read his Miranda rights.
Public records show Gray’s mother, Marcee Gray, has a criminal record dating back to 2007 and spent time in jail as recently as last April and was prohibited from communicating with father Colin without a third-party intermediary.
Marcee, 43, has a criminal record spanning four Georgia counties, including drug abuse, domestic violence and property damage, as well as civil fraud claims.
The family home was raided Wednesday afternoon and FBI investigators seized firearms and evidence.
Marcee, 43, has a criminal record spanning four Georgia counties, including drug abuse, domestic violence and property damage, as well as civil fraud claims.
Neighbors saw Colin return to the family home Wednesday night, though it is unclear whether he turned himself in to authorities.
One neighbour told DailyMail.com they were “terrified” by the new charges, adding that the family had “stayed away from their parents” and had not integrated into the community in their two years at the property.
The teen denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a threatening social media post, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.
According to the report, conflicting evidence about the post’s origin left investigators unable to make any arrests. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing to warrant filing charges at the time.
Professor Richard Aspinwall was identified as one of the four victims of the shooting. Christina Irimie was also identified as a victim.
Mason Schermerhorn, 14, an autistic student at Apalachee High School, was the first victim to be identified. Christian Angulo, 14, also lost his life in the senseless shooting.
The teen was interviewed after the sheriff received a tip from the FBI that Gray, then 13, “had possibly threatened to shoot up a high school tomorrow.” The threat was made on Discord, a social media platform popular with video game players, according to the sheriff’s office incident report.
According to the report, the FBI’s lead pointed to a Discord account associated with an email address linked to Colt Gray. But the boy said he would “never say something like that, even in jest,” according to the investigator’s report.
The transcript of the interview quotes the teen as saying, “I promise I would never say anything where…”, with the rest of the denial rendered inaudible.
The investigator wrote that no arrests were made due to “inconsistent information” on the Discord account, which had profile information in Russian and a trail of digital evidence indicating it had been accessed in different cities in Georgia, as well as in Buffalo, New York.
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the May 2023 report and found nothing to warrant filing charges at that time.
“We didn’t fail at any point,” Mangum told The Associated Press in an interview. “We did everything we could with what we had at the time.”
The Discord account had a username written in Russian, and the translation of the letters spelled out the name Lanza, a reference to Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, officials said.
Gray denied being the author of the threats and told police he had closed his Discord account after being repeatedly hacked. He expressed concern that someone might make such accusations about him.
“He knows the severity of guns and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” the father, Colin Gray, said, according to a transcript obtained from the sheriff’s office.
Sheriff’s investigators closed the case after failing to prove Gray was logged into the Discord account and finding no grounds to seek the warrant needed to seize the family’s guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff’s office Thursday.
The boy reportedly had an obsession with other infamous school shooters, such as Parkland, Florida, killer Nikolas Cruz.
