Georgia school shooting suspect and father appear in court

ATLANTA: The Georgia teenager charged as an adult with killing four people at his high school made his first court appearance on Friday (Sep 6), and his father later appeared before the same judge on charges of enabling his son to obtain the rifle used in the shooting.
Suspected Georgia high-school shooter Colt Gray, 14, made his first appearance in state court, where he faces murder charges stemming from Wednesday’s rampage, which killed four people and wounded nine others.
Gray did not enter a plea in front of Barrow County Superior Court Judge Currie Mingledorff. He was being held without bond in the Gainesville Regional Youth Detention Center.
Mingledorff told Gray that he was charged with four counts of felony murder and that he could face life in prison if convicted by a jury. Gray was shackled as he sat next to his attorney and answered several of the judge’s questions with a nod.
The judge earlier told Gray he could face the death penalty, but later corrected himself, telling the youth he was not eligible for capital punishment given that he is younger than 18.
His father, Colin Gray, came before Mingledorff about 40 minutes after his son left the court. He has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
The 54-year-old was shackled and wearing a jail striped shirt and pants. He quietly answered a few questions by the judge and then spent most of the hearing rocking back and forth. The judge said the elder Gray faces up to 180 years in prison.
Georgia state and Barrow County investigators say Colt Gray used an “AR platform-style weapon,” or semiautomatic rifle, to carry out the attack at Apalachee High School, where two teachers and two 14-year-old students were killed.
One teacher and eight students were also wounded in the attack, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Of those, the adult and six of the students were shot, the bureau said.
Colt Gray was arrested moments after the shooting by two sheriff’s deputies assigned to the school.
Investigators have yet to comment on what may have motivated the first mass shooting on a U.S. school campus since classes resumed at summer’s end.
The shooting in Winder, a city of 18,000 some 80 km northeast of Atlanta, revived both the national debate about gun control and the outpouring of grief that follows in a country where such attacks occur with some regularity.
Officials identified those killed as 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.