The 14-year-old teenager Colt Gray heard Thursday that he was charged with the murder of two of his classmates and two teachers at the high school where he attended, in Georgia, in the southeastern United States.
The new massacre at a US school has added to the endless gruesome series of similar tragedies that have been recorded for decades.
The teenager is accused of four murders — two of his classmates, a 39-year-old male teacher and a 53-year-old female math teacher — at Apalachi High School in Winder, about 70 kilometers northeast of Atlanta.
The State Bureau of Investigation, which announced that he will be tried as an adult, said yesterday that the accused will be arraigned today.
“The investigation (…) continues,” the agency said via X. “We are in the second day of the very complex investigation and adherence to procedures is crucial,” he added, noting that an autopsy was to be performed on the victims yesterday.
His father was also arrested
The father of the teenager accused of opening fire at a Georgia high school, killing four people and injuring nine, has been arrested on multiple charges, including second-degree murder, authorities said Thursday.
Colt Gray’s father Colin Gray, 54, is facing four counts of negligent homicide, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a social media post.
In Georgia, second-degree murder is punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison, while manslaughter and felony murder carry a minimum sentence of life in prison.
Authorities charged 14-year-old Colt Gray as an adult. Arrest warrants obtained by the AP accuse him of using a semi-automatic assault rifle.
Another shocking element that came in the last few hours has to do with how the 14-year-old acquired the deadly weapon. As reported by CNN, the weapon used was an AR-15 rifle, as is often the case in tragedies of this kind, which his father had given him as a gift.
“How is it possible to have an assault rifle in the house, not have it locked up and your child know where it is?”, asked President Joe Biden rhetorically yesterday. “We need to make sure parents who allow their children to have access to guns are held accountable,” he added.
The authorities had questioned father and son in 2023
Local officials in neighboring Jackson County had questioned the father and son in 2023 about a posting of a threat to commit a school shooting. The teenager denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when questioned by authorities.
Conflicting evidence about the origin of the post was not enough to lead to an arrest. Jackson County Sheriff Janice Mangham said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing to warrant filing charges at that time.
“We didn’t drop the ball on it at all,” Mangham told The Associated Press. “We did what we could do with what we had at the time.”
In that 2023 investigation, the father said he had shotguns in the home, but his son did not have unsupervised access.
When an investigator from neighboring Jackson County took a statement from Gray last year, his father said the boy had struggled with his parents’ divorce and was often teased at school. The teenager often shot guns and hunted with his father, who photographed him with the blood of a deer on his cheeks.
“He knows the seriousness of guns and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” Colin Gray had said.
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