A Georgia teen charged in the Apalachee High School shooting has pleaded not guilty – WABE

A 14-year-old Georgia boy charged with murder in a mass shooting at Apalachee High School pleaded not guilty Tuesday.

Colt Gray’s attorney filed papers supporting the plea after Gray was arraigned Thursday. They waived an arraignment hearing scheduled for November 21.

In Georgia, it is common for defendants to enter a plea and waive the arraignment.

A Barrow County grand jury indicted Gray on a total of 55 charges as an adult, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 charges of aggravated assault in high school. Grand jurors indicted his father, Colin Gray, on 29 counts, including two counts of manslaughter and two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Both are also facing multiple counts of cruelty to children.

Colin Gray had not yet entered a plea as of Tuesday and remained scheduled for his own arraignment on Nov. 21.

Colt Gray is being held at a juvenile detention facility in Gainesville, while Colin Gray, 54, is being held at the Barrow County Jail. Neither has sought bail, and their lawyers previously declined to comment.

The September 4 shooting killed teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14. Another teacher and eight more students were injured, seven of whom were hit by gunfire.

Colin Gray is the first adult known to be charged in a Georgia school shooting. His indictment is the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings. Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first to be convicted in a US mass school shooting, were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to secure a firearm at home and behaving indifferently to signs of the deteriorating mental health of their son before killing four. students in 2021.

Investigators have said Colt Gray carried a semi-automatic assault rifle on a school bus, with the barrel sticking out of his book bag, wrapped in a poster board. They say the boy carefully plotted the shooting at the 1,900-student high school northeast of Atlanta, drawing diagrams and listing potential body counts in a notebook. He left the second period classroom and emerged from a bathroom with the gun before shooting people in a classroom and hallways.

The shooting occurred as school officials and Colt Gray’s family had discussed enrolling him in counseling or even inpatient psychiatric treatment. His home life had long been unstable, and investigators said that in the weeks before the shooting, his mother, Marcee Gray, had asked Colin Gray to secure his weapons and limit Colt’s access to firearms. Colin and Marcee Gray lived separately.

Colt Gray even created a “shrine” to school shooters through his home computer, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Kelsey Ward said in court, including a photo of Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. .