The 14-year-old suspect in a capturing that killed 4 individuals at a Georgia highschool and his father will keep in custody after back-to-back courtroom hearings Friday morning the place their attorneys declined to hunt bail.
At Colt Grey’s listening to, the teenager was suggested of his rights together with the costs and penalties he confronted for the capturing on the faculty the place he was a scholar.
After the listening to, he was escorted out in shackles on the wrists and ankles in khaki pants and a inexperienced shirt. The choose then known as Colt Grey again to the courtroom to right an earlier misstatement that his crimes may very well be punishable by demise. As a result of he’s a juvenile, the utmost penalty he would face is life with out parole. The choose additionally set one other listening to for Dec. 4.
Shortly afterward, his father, Colin Grey, was introduced into courtroom. Colin Grey, 54, was charged Thursday in reference to the capturing for letting his son possess a weapon. 9 individuals had been additionally damage in Wednesday’s assault at Apalachee Excessive College in Winder, exterior Atlanta.
Colin Grey, wearing a gray-striped jail uniform at Friday’s listening to, answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he completed eleventh grade, incomes a highschool equivalency diploma.
About 50 onlookers had been within the courtroom for the hearings, along with members of the media and sheriff’s deputies. Some members of the family of victims within the entrance row hugged one another and one lady clutched a stuffed animal. Earlier than the hearings on the Barrow County courthouse, employees set out containers of tissue alongside courtroom benches.
In accordance with arrest warrants obtained by The Related Press, Colt Grey is accused of utilizing a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill two college students and two academics on the faculty. Authorities haven’t provided any motive or defined how he obtained the gun or bought it into the college.
Colin Grey has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree homicide associated to the capturing, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey stated.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey stated.
It’s the most recent instance of prosecutors holding mother and father chargeable for their youngsters’s actions in class shootings. In April, Michigan mother and father Jennifer and James Crumbley had been the primary convicted in a U.S. mass faculty capturing. They had been sentenced to at the least 10 years in jail for not securing a firearm at dwelling and performing indifferently to indicators of their son’s deteriorating psychological well being earlier than he killed 4 college students in 2021. The Georgia shootings have additionally renewed debate about secure storage legal guidelines for weapons and have mother and father questioning how one can speak to their youngsters about faculty shootings and trauma.
The morning hearings for the daddy and son got here as police within the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody stated colleges there and nationwide have obtained threats of violence because the Apalachee Excessive College capturing, police stated in an announcement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation additionally famous that quite a few threats have been made to varsities throughout the state this week.
Earlier than Colin Grey’s arrest was reported, the AP knocked on the door of a house listed for him searching for remark about his son’s arrest.
Colt Grey was charged as an grownup with 4 counts of homicide in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, each 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
A neighbor remembered Schermerhorn as inquisitive when he was just a little boy. Aspinwall and Irimie had been each math academics, and Aspinwall additionally helped coach the college’s soccer workforce. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at an area church, the place she taught dance.
Colt Grey denied threatening to hold out a faculty capturing when authorities interviewed him final yr a couple of menacing publish on social media, in line with a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting proof on the publish’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anybody, the report stated. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum stated she reviewed the report from Could 2023 and located nothing that may have justified bringing prices on the time.
The assault was the most recent amongst dozens of faculty shootings throughout the U.S. in recent times, together with particularly lethal ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun management however there was little change to nationwide gun legal guidelines.
It was the thirtieth mass killing within the U.S. thus far this yr, in line with a database maintained by The Related Press and USA In the present day in partnership with Northeastern College. A minimum of 127 individuals have died in these killings, that are outlined as occasions during which 4 or extra individuals die inside a 24-hour interval, not together with the killer — the identical definition utilized by the FBI.
