The 14-year-old charged with killing two fellow students and two teachers at his Georgia high school made his first court appearance on Friday – with his father, who was arrested late on Thursday, set to appear shortly afterwards.
Colt Gray appeared in person, dressed in green prison scrubs and hands and ankles shackled to his waist at the hearing in Barrow county courthouse, having previously been understood to be planning to attend by video link. He traveled from the youth detention facility in which he is being held. He is being detained there as a juvenile, even though he is expected to be tried as an adult.
The suspect has been charged with four counts of felony murder after he was arrested on Wednesday following a gun rampage at Apalachee high school in Winder, outside Atlanta. Four people were fatally shot – students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and the mathematics teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
A further nine people were injured, of whom seven were understood to have suffered gunshot wounds.
The younger Gray did not enter a plea on Friday, but answered yes when the judge asked him if he could read and write, and he was accompanied by a lawyer.
The judge, Currie Mingledorff, initially told the 14-year-old that he could face the death penalty, then later brought the boy back into court to tell him that, as he is under 18, he does not face the death penalty, and faces the maximum punishment of life in prison without the possibility of parole, if he is convicted.
The teenager sat about 10ft in front of a public bench filled with 18 parents and other relatives of the four victims who were killed.
The parents of Mason Schermerhorn, one of the two 14-year-old students killed in the rampage, were among the relatives. The boy’s mother held in her lap a Mickey Mouse soft toy – her son had been looking forward to an upcoming vacation at Walt Disney World. Relatives could be seen wiping away tears and trying to comfort each other.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, 54, was brought into court also shackled about an hour after his son, dressed in a grey and white prison smock.
He rocked back and forth and could be heard crying as he was read his rights and told that he faced a total of up to 180 years’ imprisonment for two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.
On Thursday night, CNN reported that Colin Gray told investigators this week that he had given the AR-15 style rifle to his son in December last year as a Christmas present, having bought it at a local gun store. That would have been seven months after the FBI interviewed both the father and son in May 2023 after having been tipped off about threats to commit a school shooting posted on the gaming social media platform Discord.
That investigation was eventually closed after investigators were unable to substantiate the threats.
Father and son are scheduled to have their preliminary hearings in court on 4 December.
Meanwhile, America’s ideological split over gun control spilled over into the presidential campaign after JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, voiced regret that school shootings had “become a fact of life” in the US.
Vance’s comments – in the wake of the shooting in Georgia – ignited a political row after Democrats depicted them as evidence of a lack of empathy while Republicans claimed the remarks had been taken out of context.
Vance called for more security measures in schools without mentioning gun control, while Democrats including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, the US president, want a ban on assault-style rifles, more background checks and other gun safety action.
Asked about the Georgia shooting while speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday evening, Vance said: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realise that our schools are soft targets.”
