Georgia judge makes verdict on whether US school shooter, 14, to face death penalty
Georgia judge makes verdict on whether US school shooter, 14, to face death penalty
Reuters
A US judge has ruled that a suspected high school shooter will not face the death penalty.
Colt Gray appeared in the Barrow County courtroom two days after a rampage that killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city of 18,000 some 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.
The 14-year-old student at the school has been charged as an adult with four counts of murder.
Prosecutors have also charged his father Colin who faces up to 180 years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.
Colt Gray, who is charged as an adult with four counts of murder
Reuters
Georgia judge makes verdict on whether US school shooter, 14, to face death penaltyReuters
Colin Gray, 54
Reuters
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.
He 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 US campus mass shooting since the start of the school year at summer's end.
Officials identified those killed as 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53.
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A house that media reports indicate is where Colt Gray lived
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People pay their respect at a makeshift memorial at Apalachee High School
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Both of the Grays were interviewed in May 2023 by officials in a neighbouring county in connection with online threats about carrying out a school shooting made on the gaming social media platform Discord, according to investigators.
The Grays told the Jackson County Sheriff's Department they had not made the threats.
The father also said he had hunting guns locked in a safe in the house and his son did not have access to them.
Jackson County investigators closed the case after being unable to substantiate that either Gray was connected to the Discord account, and did not find grounds to seek the needed court order to confiscate the family's guns, according to police reports released by the sheriff's office on Thursday.
Colt Gray, who is charged as an adult with four counts of murder in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo,
Reuters
Flowers are seen at the Apalachee High School
Reuters
Cynthia Godsoe, a law professor at the Brooklyn Law School who has practised family law, said that charging parents of school shooters will likely become popular with the public, police and prosecutors because it has the veneer of tackling the problem.
"But this does nothing," she said. "This does nothing to stop school shootings, as egregious as they are. It's a way for police to say they're doing something."
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