WINDER, Georgia: The 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was expected to make his first court appearance Friday, a day after his father was also arrested for allowing his son to possess a weapon.
Colt Gray, who is charged as an adult with four counts of murder, will appear by video from a youth detention facility for the proceedings at the Barrow County courthouse. The hearing will be held two days after authorities said the teen opened fire at Apalachee High School in Winder, just outside Atlanta.
The teen’s father, Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey.
“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. Colin Gray’s first court appearance has not been set.
Father and son have been charged in the deaths of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, according to Hosey. Nine other people were injured, seven of them shot.
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 were the first convicted in a US mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021.
Arrest warrants obtained by the AP accuse Colt Gray of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle in the attack. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun and got it into the school.
The teen denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday.
Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.
The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the US in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws.
It was the 30th mass killing in the US so far 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 those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
First court appearance set for Georgia teen accused of killing 4 at his high school
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First court appearance set for Georgia teen accused of killing 4 at his high school
- Colt Gray will appear by video from a youth detention facility for the proceedings at the Barrow County courthouse
- It’s the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings
Over 1,400 Indonesians left Cambodian scam groups in five days: embassy
- Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments
- Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month
PHNOM PENH: More than 1,400 Indonesians have left cyberscam networks in Cambodia in the last five days, Jakarta said on Wednesday, after Phnom Penh pledged a fresh crackdown on the illicit trade.
Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia, some willingly and others trafficked, lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments, netting tens of billions of dollars each year.
Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month as the government pledged to “eliminate” problems related to the online fraud industry, which the United Nations says employs at least 100,000 people in Cambodia alone.
Between January 16-20, 1,440 Indonesians left sites operated by online scam syndicates around Cambodia and went to the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh for help, the mission said in a statement.
The “largest wave of arrivals” occurred on Monday when 520 Indonesians came to the embassy, it said.
Recent Cambodian law enforcement measures against scam operators meant more citizens would likely continue showing up at the embassy, it added.
“The main problem for them is that they do not possess passports and they are staying in Cambodia without valid immigration permits,” according to the embassy.
It urged Indonesians leaving scam sites to report to the embassy, which could assist them with securing travel documents and overstay fine waivers in order to return home.
Indonesia said this week that its embassy in Phnom Penh handled more than 5,000 consular service cases for citizens in Cambodia last year — more than 80 percent of which were related to Indonesians who “admitted to being involved with online scam syndicates.”
Cambodia arrested and deported Chinese-born tycoon Chen Zhi, accused of running Internet scam operations from Cambodia, to China this month.
Chen, a former adviser to Cambodia’s leaders, was indicted by US authorities in October.
Analysts say Chen’s extradition has left some of those running Internet scams from Cambodia fearing legal consequences — after the criminal enterprises ballooned for years — with some operators opting to release people or evacuate their compounds.
